Turkana adopts the latest technology in the TB fight

What you need to know:

• The county TB prevalence rate stands at 18 per cent, higher than the recommended 15 per cent by the World Health Organization (WHO).
• In August, healthcare workers in the county had identified villages neighbouring Uganda and South Sudan and the densely populated Kakuma Refugee Camp as high TB burden areas.
• They noted that patients have been discontinuing treatment whenever they migrate to South Sudan or Uganda in search of water and pasture for their livestock.

Turkana County government with support from development partners has adopted an ultra-portable digital chest X-ray machine for the diagnosis and treatment of Tuberculosis (TB).

The county TB prevalence rate stands at 18 per cent, higher than the recommended 15 per cent by the World Health Organization (WHO). 

This is even as residents from areas presumed to be high disease burden areas in Turkana Central and Turkana West benefit from free TB screening and outreach activities. 

According to the County TB Coordinator, Dr Job Okemwa, computer-aided digital chest X-ray is an important tool for triage (a process to identify risk and select the most appropriate care pathway when a person presents with symptoms) and proactive screening for pulmonary TB in adults, children and people living with HIV.

“Alone, it does not lead to a confirmative diagnosis of TB, but it is a highly sensitive tool that can pick up early forms of TB, including in people without symptoms. Accurate and fast information at this first step can potentially reduce the number of tests and costs associated with confirmatory testing,” Dr Okemwa told Healthy Nation.

He said they rely on computer-aided detection to interpret chest X-ray images of patients either as a replacement for human readers or as a first triaging step to enable more people to be screened for TB.

The chest X-ray machines emit lower doses of radiation and can be packed into backpacks and thus are so easily transported into the field to facilitate the detection of TB in hard-to-reach populations that currently face barriers in accessing services.

Mr Jonas Ngasike, Turkana Central TB coordinator, said the outreaches are aimed at finding available TB cases so that patients can enrol for free treatment.   “We are also creating awareness about the infectious disease with assistance from community health volunteers to get more people to get tested,” he said. 

Last Saturday, Canaan village residents turned up in large numbers for TB screening following successful community mobilisation and sensitisation.

“I have been coughing for over a year now. I’m here to be screened because I’ve never been tested for TB before,” said Epungure John, a resident.

The county government is partnering with World Relief, the National Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Lung Disease Program and Amref Health Africa in Kenya to reach out to more targeted settlements in Lodwar, Kalokol, Natira, Kakuma and Nameyemen.

In August, healthcare workers in the county had identified villages neighbouring Uganda and South Sudan and the densely populated Kakuma Refugee Camp as high TB burden areas. They noted that patients have been discontinuing treatment whenever they migrate to South Sudan or Uganda in search of water and pasture for their livestock.

At the refugee camp, the team cited overcrowding as a major challenge in the fight against TB, noting that gains have always been reversed with cases of reinfections.

Article first published on https://nation.africa/kenya/health/turkana-adopts-latest-technology-in-tb-fight-4019690