JICA donates TB testing equipment worth Sh32m

By Ally Jamah

The fight against tuberculosis received a shot in the arm after the Government received hi-tech testing equipment worth Sh32 million.

This comes as Public Health officials are increasingly jittery about the rising cases of drug-resistant strains of TB, which threaten to reverse the many years of gains made in the war against the disease.

Japanese International Cooperation Agency donated 102 LED Fluorescent microscopes to the Ministry of Public Health to be distributed countrywide. Previously, there were only 20 such microscopes in all public facilities.

The Government is struggling to replace saliva testing, which has proved unreliable in detecting TB. The saliva testing has been in use for the past 100 years.

"These microscopes will significantly improve testing of TB. They will be distributed to provincial and district hospitals to boost case detection," said Dr Joseph Sitienei, head of leprosy, TB and lung diseases division.

According to the WHO, only five per cent of the estimated global burden of multi-drug-resistant TB are detected due to critical gaps in laboratory capacity in many endemic countries.

Training of staff

Dr Sitienei said the Government is planning to purchase about 100 additional LED microscopes in the coming months to boost the detection of TB. He added that Genexpert, another accurate technology to test TB, would also be scaled up.

JICA boss in Kenya Masaaki Kato requested the Government to invest in training of staff to handle the new machines as well as maintenance.

"We trust that our joint efforts will ultimately bring better services to Kenyans in need by reducing turn-around time in testing for TB and increasing sensitivity for case detection," he said.

The Government has renewed worry about the increasing cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis, which is more expensive and trickier to treat than ordinary TB.

"We are doing well with ordinary TB, but the drug-resistant varieties are a big threat to us. We detect 10 to 15 people every month. That number is too high," he said.

He warned that should numbers of patients increase further, treatment would overwhelm the Government since it costs an average of Sh2 million and two years to treat one patient.