Nigeria faces a significant tuberculosis burden and addressing this challenge requires innovative approaches and partnerships.
Due to this, experts at a consultation meeting opened up discussions to enhance public private partnerships in order to increase effective diagnostic testing and treatment.
Tuberculosis remains a public health problem in Nigeria with more than 450,000 infections recorded in 2020 and more than 155,000 deaths.
To eradicate this disease, there is an advocacy to increase the sustainability of the response across board in order to reduce the burden.
Many Nigerians who may have TB are unaware that they have it, others are limited by the lack of awareness but many more remain silent due to the high level of stigma they may face.
This consultation meeting between the public and private sector actors is opening up the platform for collaboration that is expected to improve access to TB services and resources.
The group believes a multi sectoral approach will help to provide better diagnostic tools that could cause a reduction in the numbers of tb infections including for latent tb infections.
The national tuberculosis and leprosy control program says the country achieved an 89 percent TB treatment success rate in 2020, forty three percent of tb treatment coverage in 2021 and has recorded a 17,600 drug resistant tuberculosis notification in 2022.
