Kampala TB reference lab to serve entire region
Making testing of drug resistant TB easier and bring the service closer
Uganda's national Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory will soon become a reference laboratory for the entire East African region.
The facility will in 2012 become the second TB supranational laboratory in sub-Saharan Africa after a similar laboratory in South Africa.
The World Health Organisation granted Uganda candidate status to join the TB Supranational Reference Laboratory Network, which will make testing of drug resistant TB easier and bring the service closer.
Countries in the East African region will get a more cost-effective way to test for drug resistant TB than has been the case, where samples had to be sent to Australia, Europe or South Africa.
The WHO supranational laboratory will make testing and treatment of multi-drug resistant TB easier in a region with a high incidence of TB. Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and the DR Congo are all among the 22 high-burden TB countries.
Due to the strengthening of its laboratory network, Uganda out-competed its neighbors Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya to get the nomination.
Uganda has increased case detection rates from 51 to 53 per cent and treatment success rates from 70 to 86 per cent.
Dr Moses Joloba, who led Uganda’s participation in getting a supranational laboratory, said Uganda’s laboratory network has improved from only five doctors, who were testing and treating TB in 2004, to a network of laboratories across the country able to test TB.
The supranational laboratory will boost the treatment of drug resistant TB whose testing is much more complicated and expensive.
Uganda offers free treatment for TB patients on first line treatment, but doctors say the country cannot yet afford to treat or test multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB.
Apart from depending on the non-governmental Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) who offer free treatment, MDR TB patients have have no choice but to pay for their own treatment or die. MSF has been sending its samples for testing to Belgium.
Dr Swaib Muhammad, a doctor with MSF said given the expense of treating MDR TB patients in the first six to eight months, the government would have to first clarify and offer resources for a person receiving treatment to stay in any hospital.
TB is currently the leading cause of death among people living with HIV/Aids in Uganda.
By DICTA ASIIMWE
The East African