Kenya's TB budget short by Sh3.8 billion

Kenya needs Sh10 billion to provide comprehensive tuberculosis care to the more than 100,000 people who contract the disease every year.

A global report released on October 14 showed the country has a deficit of Sh3.8 billion to address the TB burden.

The required funding, according to the Global Tuberculosis Report 2020, is Sh9.4 billion.

“Overall, lower-middle-income countries accounted for 57 per cent ($0.9 billion) of the total reported gap in 2020, with the largest gaps reported by Nigeria ($268 million), the Philippines ($152 million), Pakistan ($104 million), Ukraine ($73 million), Kenya ($38 million), the United Republic of Tanzania ($35 million)...,” reads the report.

The report says in many countries, national strategic plans for TB are less ambitious than the targets set in the global health plan.

Covid response

“Some budgets have also been revised downwards in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and reallocation of funds from TB to the Covid-19 response has been reported by several countries (Kenya, the Philippines, Somalia and Zambia),” it adds.

From the report, Kenya is among the 30 countries with high TB burden though it has also reported progress.

Between 2015 and 2020, Africa reduced TB disease incidence by 16 per cent and deaths also dropped by 19 per cent.

In Kenya, the report estimates that there are 140,000 people with TB as of 2019 out of an estimated population of 52.6 million.

About 33,000 people die every year from TB in the country of which 20,000 are HIV negative while 13,000 are positive.

Of the 149,524 new HIV positive cases put on anti-retroviral therapy treatment, 6,722 were TB cases.