Experts: T.B. is still a public safety concern

While the weather experts were celebrating World Meteorological Day, their counterparts in medicine today marked World Tuberculosis Day. According to Director of the National T.B. Programme, Dr. Ines Moguel, tuberculosis is both preventable and curable, but new cases of the disease continue to be diagnosed every year. Moguel maintains that given Belize’s high HIV prevalence, eliminating T.B. as a public safety concern will be tough but not impossible.

Dr. Ines Moguel, Director, National T.B. Programme
“When the AIDS epidemic boomed in the ‘80s, at that time the disease was not a public health problem, but because of the HIV epidemic it was revamped, the disease came back again with more strength. So what we need to do is to look at all angles of the disease to be able to control it. It is easily preventable and it’s easily curable. So what we need to do is let people aware how you can get it, what are the symptoms if you are sick, especially anybody who has a cough for more than two weeks, then you need to come to the nearest health centre and get checked and once you are diagnosed, having the treatment for six months will actually totally cure you. That’s the most important.”

While many people infected with T.B. show no signs of the disease, HIV patients, whose immune systems are already under attack, are more prone to physical manifestation. Of the ninety new cases of T.B. in Belize in 2005, twenty-five were in HIV positive patients. In 2006, of the eighty new cases, twelve were people with the co-infection. According to Moguel, while the main sputum test is not available countrywide, the Ministry of Health has been upgrading the diagnostic services available at the Central Laboratory in Belize City and it is hoped that by the end of the year, similar testing facilities will be available at health centres countrywide.