•New evidence is published in a recent peer-reviewed publication, and summarises assessments in 20 countries including Kenya.
•In 2019, Kenya reported and treated 86,504 cases of TB, including about 10 per cent IN children.
Image: JOSEPH KANGOGO
Stigma and discrimination against TB patients is rife and is the leading human rights barrier to diagnosis, treatment and care of infected people, a new report suggests.
It says these barriers greatly diminish the effectiveness of national TB control efforts in high-burden countries such as Kenya.
The new evidence is published in a recent peer-reviewed publication, and summarises assessments carried out in 20 countries, including Kenya.
“The review of recent community, rights and gender assessment findings from 20 countries means we now, for the first time, have the evidence needed to show we must have a TB response centred on social justice and human rights,” Dr Lucica Ditiu, executive director of Stop TB Partnership.The nonprofit organisation led the studt.
It was carried out between 2018 and 2021, in 20 countries across Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The findings were published in late December 2021 in the \Health and Human Rights Journal'.
TB attacks the lungs and other organs. It is the fifth leading cause of death in Kenya and in 2019, about 33,000 people died of the disease.
“We need to do for TB what strident activists did for HIV more than 30 years ago,” Maurine Murenga, a Kenyan activist from the Global Fund Communities Delegation, sai.
“It’s time to get angry and noisy to ensure that the voices of communities affected by TB are heard loud and clear by policymakers, governments, donors and drug manufacturers around the world.”
In the 18 countries surveyed (90 per cent), TB patients experience stigmatising and discriminatory treatment in health care.
In 15 countries (75 per cent), people affected by TB experience employment discrimination. Yet, 19 of these countries (95 per cent) fail to explicitly prohibit such discrimination in law.
Findings in 18 of the countries (90 per cent) highlight various privacy concerns, including breaches in confidentiality that deter the use of TB health services.
In most countries, patriarchal norms negatively impact women’s access to TB health services and increase their vulnerability to TB infection and disease.
Women affected by TB also said they experience more frequent or more intense stigma and discrimination than men in their families and communities, sometimes leading to emotional and physical abuse, divorce or abandonment.
According to Health CAS Rashid Aman, despite TB diagnosis and treatment being offered free of charge in Kenya, not all who are infected with TB are reached and therefore do not receive the care they need.
“In 2019, we reported and treated 86,504 cases of TB, of which approximately 10 per cent are children,” he said in 2020 when he launched the Kenya Injectable Free Regimens and Latent TB Infection (LTBI) Treatment policies.
He said that Drug-resistant TB cases have been rising, with 688 such cases in the country in 2019.
(Edited by V. Trauma)