Lubango – Some 379 patients abandoned the tuberculosis treatment during 2023, at the Lubango’s Sanatorium Hospital, Huíla province, an increase of 153 cases compared to 2022.
The information was given to ANGOP today, Monday, by the director of the Sanatorium, Lourenço Kotele, highlighting that 'the situation is recurrent and worrying', pointing out 'three-dimensional' factors that contribute to abandonment, such as the lack of transport to hospital, the false information about an alleged improvement, after a month of administering the medication and the excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages.
He detailed that the 379 patients correspond to 13%, which is high, as the indicator to improve the program must be reduced to 5%, so that the fight against abandonment is a fight that requires the involvement of the entire society.
He highlighted that one of the dangers of this abandonment of tuberculosis treatment is the change of category from sensitive tuberculosis to multi-drug resistant (MDR), which leads many of these people to death and leads to new infections.
“With all of this, the State has large expenses, and with sensitive tuberculosis, it spends around one hundred US dollars to treat a hospitalized patient, over a period of one to two weeks. In multi-drug resistance, it takes a thousand dollars to care for a patient, whose treatment lasts up to six months”, he explained.
Lourenço Kotele highlighted that in 2023, the hospital carried out 24 thousand and 187 consultations, among which, it reported two thousand 870 new cases of tuberculosis, compared to two thousand and 31 in 2022.
According to Lourenço Kotele, tuberculosis is still a public health problem, looking at the numbers, because at the moment 1,541 patients have been controlled in the intensive phase, treated on an outpatient basis, for two months and 1,071 in the maintenance stage.
The solution to reducing the high rate of treatment abandonment, according to the source, involves providing health centers and posts with medical and medication capacity, to prevent these patients from walking many kilometers, as well as acquiring means of transport to assist the patient after discharge from hospital.
He stated that in the cross-sectional study carried out, of the global 24 thousand 187 patients treated, three percent died, compared to five percent in 2022, however, it is still worrying, as it would be good if people no longer died from the disease. BP/MS/DOJ
