By Lisa Kadango- Malango:
First Lady Monica Chakwera has said there is a need to join hands in the battle against tuberculosis (TB).
She said this at the End Tuberculosis Innovation Summit held in New York, the United States, where she and President Lazarus Chakwera have gone for United Nations General Assembly engagements.
Lucica Ditiu, who is the executive director for Stop TB Partnership in Switzerland, was one of those at the event.
As the newly appointed Ambassador of the Stop TB Partnership in Malawi, the First Lady said Malawi has been doing its best to keep TB at bay.
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She said, as a result, cases of the disease have been on a downward spiral
“The cases dropped from 197 per 100,000 people in 2015 to 125 cases per 100,000 people in 2022,” she said.
However, Chakwera bemoaned the distance girls and women who reside in rural areas cover to access treatment.
She cited door-to-door treatment initiatives as one of the tools for addressing the problem of distance to healthcare service centres.
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Chakwera also pointed at TB mobile diagnostics community sputum collection points as another strategy that would help countries eradicate TB by the year 2030.
She then appealed for increased support from international institutions, emphasising that this would culminate in improved service delivery in Africa in general and Malawi in particular.— Mana
