With Uganda expecting 60,000 new cases of TB a year, small private clinics in the slums of Kampala have become the focus for fighting the disease
It is common for patients to arrive at Dr Kasauli Mahmoud Zinda’s private clinic in Bwaise, just north of Kampala’s humming business district, with a persistent cough, little appetite and a fever that, even after various treatments, just will not break. Zinda knows the symptoms usually add up to tuberculosis. With itinerant residents crowded into poorly ventilated homes and shops, the conditions in the impoverished neighbourhood are ideal for transmitting the disease.
But when he first opened the clinic, Pillars Medical Centre, in 2003, there was little Zinda could do about the suspected cases. “We didn’t have the laboratory knowhow, we didn’t have the expertise to actually identify the TB cases,” he said. As a private clinic it also did not receive any support from the ministry of health. National TB funding is mostly funnelled through public and non-profit facilities. Zinda was simply left “to guess” and then refer suspected patients to a nearby government facility for follow-up.
Related: Tuberculosis is an old disease with a new face – and it needs to be stopped | Jennifer Hughes
We are not finding all the cases that we should be finding. So as a country, we are struggling to control tuberculosis
Continue reading...
No comments:
Post a Comment