Ayodele Olalere
The Lagos State government has begun searching for 15,000 Lagosians who are carriers of the symptoms of the deadly tuberculosis disease and are currently on the loose in the state.
In order to be able to identify the patients, the state government through the Office of the First Lady of Lagos State, Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu and Stop TB Partnership Nigeria on Tuesday investited the 10 female council chairmen and 47 wives of chairmen of local government and local council development areas to serve as ambassadors at the grassroots level to be able to identify people suffering from tuberculosis.
At the investiture ceremony held at the Lagos House, Ikeja, the First Lady told the inductees that their role as TB ambassadors is to create awareness about the disease through traditional and social media platforms especially radio and television programs.
They are also to organise activities during World TB Day to create more awareness about TB, mobilize stakeholders in their domain, and take the campaign to schools, markets, churches, mosques among other places.
“We need to act faster because the TB cases are rising very high. The ambassadors have 48hrs to set up awareness programs. Use your mouth and voice to talk to people in your local governments. It’s a collective efforts,” she said
She further said though tuberculosis is highly infectious but it’s preventable and curable if detected early and the patient completes his or her treatments so as not to infect others.
The Commissioner for Health, Akin Abayomi said in 2023, over 18,000 Lagosians were identified with tuberculosis disease, adding that the number increased to 32,000 in 2024.
Out of the 32,000, Abayomi said over 15,000 were diagnosed while the remaining 15,000 are currently roaming about in the state, yet to be treated and their whereabouts unknown.
He expressed worries that if the 15,000 carries are not treated, each of them have the capacity to infect 15 people which could increase the number of infected Lagosians to 300,000 by 2025.
“For years, we have been identifying patients and treating them but the council chairmen need to look for these 15,000 carriers of the disease,” Abayomi said.
Abayomi identified events such as weddings, birthdays and burials as the easiest and commonest avenues where the disease is easily contracted, and warned party goers to be more vigilant.
In his lecture titled ‘Ending Tuberculosis in Lagos: A Necessity to Ending TB Globally,’ the Deputy Director and Program Manager, Olusola Sokoya, said 2.9million cases of tuberculosis are reported globally with Nigeria contributing 6% and the highest in Africa.
He identified risk factors of the disease to include dirty environment, over-population and poverty.
Citing 2023 a report on cases of tuberculosis in all local governments in Lagos, Sokoya said Alimosho had the highest number of patients with 5,579 and 2,028 treated followed by Mushin with 4,523.
The First Lady also investiture Lagos TB Steering Committee and members of the STOP TB Partnership, Lagos.