THE Guyana Chest Society (GCS) recently agreed to partner with the Ministry of Health to submit a proposal to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria for a grant to support the development of tuberculosis control in Guyana. The GCS is a non-profit, non governmental organisation dedicated to providing support to persons directly and indirectly affected by tuberculosis and lung diseases, and is therefore seeking to generate public support by actively securing broad consensus and social commitment to fight and eliminate TB as a public health threat.

In order to achieve its mission to increase awareness of TB in Guyana and increase community participation in the prevention and control of TB, the GCS is committed to educational programmes on tuberculosis (TB) for community leaders and civil society; patient empowerment workshops; creation of a TB Patient Association comprising both present and former patients, and participation of faith-based organisations and sports personalities.

Speaking at a press conference Friday, Head of the TB Programme, Dr. Jitendra Mohanlall, said the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that billons of the world’s population is infected with TB.
He said approximately 2.3 billion people in the world are living with latent TB infection.
“If you are a healthcare worker in this Age, you should know what needs to be done; and it’s a lot of work you will learn from the trainings,” Dr Mohanlall said.

He noted also that a lot of awareness programmes are being undertaken in the various administrative regions as a continuous effort in the fight against TB. “We encourage healthcare workers not to stigmatise and discriminate, because, even in Region 4 (Demerara-Mahaica), the staff sees over 60% of all TB cases in the country, and they don’t have a different immune system from anybody else,” the doctor said.

Noting that tuberculosis has been around for far too long, and that persons need to know about it and to build their capacity in dealing with its issues, Dr Mohanlall said:

“If a healthcare worker is exposed to TB, it’s recommended that each year that person be screened for TB, because you can prevent yourself from falling sick with this disease; and that is what is done. So it’s not a disease that is incurable; its treatable, it’s curable and can be prevented.”

He urged health care workers to work with TB patients, saying the government has managed, over the years, to decentralize TB projects to various sections of society.

He said it is no longer a small amount of persons being affected by the disease, and the programme has accordingly seen its reach being extended.

“It’s not only a small group of persons centrally seeing TB patients in this country anymore. We’ve done a lot of work, a lot of training, and we in the National TB Programme would like to see health care workers working with TB patients.”

He informed that tuberculosis is a curable disease, and should not be treated as a foreign disease or one that is incurable. Because it is easily transported in the air, persons are exposed to it.