Wednesday 24 / April / 2024
Muscat: The Sultanate, represented by the Ministry of Health (MOH), launched the National Tuberculosis (TB) Eradication Strategy, to be carried out in stages, with special emphasis on lowering the percentage of infection and mortality cases.
The launch of the strategy coincides with celebrations marking the World TB Day, which falls on March 24 every year. TB figures as the most contagious disease in the world and the Sultanate ranks among countries with the least levels of TB infection (10:100000) at a rate of 10 patients to 100,000 people.
Dr Ahmed Mohammed Al Sa’eedi, Minister of Health, who was the chief guest at the Strategy’s launch ceremony, said that cases of infection with TB in the Sultanate have been in decline over the past 10 years, since 2019 when marginal rise was registered due to the introduction of high accuracy diagnostic apparatus.
The minister pointed out that the cases registered in the Sultanate were mostly sourced from abroad and detected upon the examination of expatriates despite the tests they conduct prior to their arrival.
The Sultanate was chosen as a model country, one of very few countries in the Middle East to have gone a long way in the eradication of tuberculosis through its close cooperation with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other parties towards the total eradication of the disease before 2035, thereby meeting the goals of its roadmap “National TB Eradication Strategy”.
Dr John Jabbour, WHO Representative in the Sultanate, said in a speech on the occasion, “The Sultanate worked hard over the past five decades of its renaissance to extend health services to all parts of the country. Towards this end, the Sultanate endorsed primary health as a gateway to different levels of healthcare.”
The National TB Stragegy aims, in its first stages, to lower infection to 10 per one million by 2035, with a view to attaining the pre-eradication stage by slashing infection rates by 90 per cent and mortality rates by 95 per cent, compared to the epidemiological situation in 2015.
The rate of TB infections in the Sultanate by 2020 stood at 7 to 100,000 when 314 cases were registered, of them 95 Omanis and 219 non-Omanis, in addition to 23 death cases.
The WHO and other prominent international institutions hailed the Sultanate’s efforts in eradicating tuberculosis.
Recently, the WHO issued a TB Eradication Guide in Europe based on established evidence and experiences published in some countries.
In this context, the WHO flashed the example of the Sultanate as an interesting model in the Middle East, equating the Omani experience with the US and Canadian experiences, and asserting that all these countries are on their way to terminally eradicate tuberculosis.
