Pupils schooled about TB
Roadshow raises kids’ awareness
UNTIL yesterday, 7-year-old Mahmond Abdoel Hai of Grassy Park couldn’t list a single symptom of tuberculosis. “But now I know that if you have it you sweat a lot, cough and lose a lot of weight. We’ve been told to wash our hands all the time, and cover our mouths when we cough if we want to prevent the spread of TB,” he explained.
Yesterday, the little boy was among a few hundred pupils from MuhammadeyahPrimary School in Wynberg who learnt about the disease during a visit to the school by Reverend Mpho Tutu.
Tutu – the daughter of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and head of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation – visited the school to mark World TB Day.
The day is marked every year on March 24 to acknowledge the disease which is the number one killer in the country and infects about half-a-million South Africans yearly.
The school is among 10 primary schools that were visited by the foundation over the past three days as part of its roadshow to raise awareness about the deadly disease. Tutu, who handed over educational board games to the children, said while many of them were unaware of TB, educating them was essential as they, too, were at risk of contracting the disease.
“We want to encourage young children to know more about the disease because they can take these messages back home and influence how their parents do things. The incidence of TB is on the increase in the country, and children are facing a similar risk as adults… we are seeing more and more children with TB,” she said.
TB was one of the issues closest to her heart as her father was also exposed to the disease as a child. While TB remained a major killer, Tutu said the good news was that it was curable, and the treatment period for common TB was not as lengthy as it was in the old days.
“My father stayed in hospital for two years just to get treated from ordinary TB. These days you can get TB treated within six months. That’s a huge improvement compared to what it used to be,” she said.
Meanwhile, as part of commemorating World TB Day, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa also launched the biggest TB screening programme to date, which would see 6 million prisoners, miners and schoolchildren tested.
In the first year of the three-year campaign, 135 000 inmates would be screened, and up to 500 000 mineworkers.
In mining regions, around 5 million residents and 1.2 million children in schools, early childhood development centres and crèches would also be screened as part of the campaign, which is hoped to screen more than 90 percent by March 2017.
The Higher Education and Training HIV/Aids Programmealso marked the day by launching a TB screening programme at Dr Kenneth Kaunda District in North West district yesterday.
Dr Ramneek Ahluwalia, director of the HIV programme said burgeoning numbers of drug-resistant TB cases, such as multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB and extreme drug-resistant (XDR) strains, were now also seen in higher education institutions.
“It is concerning that we managed cases of MDR and XDR TB on several campuses during the course of last year,” he said.
Ahluwalia said the key to preventing the spread of TB was to educate people about its symptoms and intensify screening efforts to ensure that students and educators had access to TB treatment.