Stakeholders reveal challenges in fighting TB in Kenya

Speaking during the 2nd national community systems strengthening forum, the experts called for community engagement in advocacy and encouraging uptake of health services in TB management.

“At the country level, Kenya is not doing very well because we are listed among the 30 countries that contribute to 80% of the global TB burden in Africa we are ranked number four after South Africa, Nigeria and Ethiopia,” Everlyn Kibuchi, National Co-ordinator at Stop TB partnership Kenya, said

Tuberculosis is the ninth leading cause of death worldwide. According to the World Health Organisation, over 10.6 million people fell ill with TB in 2022 globally leading to 1.1 million deaths.

Kenya records an average of 90,000 TB cases annually but despite the grim statistics, the country has made great progress in addressing TB leading to a sharp reduction of TB related mortalities and TB infections between 2020 and 2022.

“For TB mortalities we were able to move from 33,000 to 17,000 TB related deaths as at the end of 2022 which is about a half and that is good progress,” she added. 

The experts argue that community engagement has also been pivotal in addressing the funding gap in TB Management. 

“There are some gaps that we have identified within the health system and government alone is not in a position to address to how do we work with the government so that they are able to contract community based organizations, community led organizationds to respond to some of the issues,” Stephen Nyakwana, chair of TB Regional Grant Committee pointed out. 

With 6 years left to the global deadline of ending TB by 2030, the stakeholders have called for reinforcement of the TB management strategies which include fast tracking of the development of a TB vaccine and the adoption of TB prevention therapy for vulnerable populations.

“We have had organizations having their capacity developed to be able to attract funding they have been able to participate in processes that we have had at the county level and some of them have been able to undertake advocacy and influence the counties to increase the budget for tb, hiv and malaria programmes in their counties,” Benson Ulo Programme Manager - Global Fund TB Grant, Amref Health Africa said.