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TB patients co-infected with HIV increases this year

Oct 28, 2012 News

Though Guyana has been able to stabilize the epidemic of Tuberculosis (TB) over the past four years, the number of new patients diagnosed with TB and found to be co-infected with HIV has increased this year.
This was related by Dr. Jeetendra Mohan Lall, Manager of the National TB Control Programme, yesterday.
Tuberculosis (TB) is an airborne infectious disease that is preventable, treatable and curable.
According to Dr. Mohan Lall, efforts are being made to stabilize the incidence of TB as has been done over the past four years. However, the burning issue of HIV driving the epidemic remains.
“Although, we have managed to flatten the incidence curve, in Guyana patients with TB co-infected with HIV is higher this year with one-third of the new TB patients found to be co-infected with HIV,” he added.
Citing the World Health Organization’s information on TB, Dr. Mohan Lall said that it is estimated that one-third of the world’s population has Latent TB infection (LTBI) of which approximately 10 percent of this population with LTBI will fall sick with TB disease .
However, persons living with HIV are more susceptible to contracting TB. As such, a lot of work has to be done to prevent the contraction of the TB bacteria in persons living with HIV and to initiate preventive therapy for the patient who has already been exposed to TB.
He noted that persons living with HIV should be screened for TB regularly.
“Having one-third of new TB patients co-infected with HIV calls for a more collaborative effort involving patients. Patients need to be more involved and responsible for their health.
“For instance, some patients do not return to read off  their Tuberculin skin test  (TST) result so they are unaware if they have LTBI,” Dr. Mohan Lall said.
Preventive Therapy is available for HIV patients who are infected with Latent TB infection but their compliance with the treatment is pertinent. He explained that following screening HIV patients who are exposed to the TB bacteria need to undergo a nine-month preventive therapy.

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