Public hospitals saved my life —TB survivor
AFTER three private consultations and being told she had hernia, Ms Laina Benson did not give up on seeking answers as to why she had a bulging stomach.
She turned to a public hospital where she was diagnosed with Tuberculosis (TB) and immediately started treatment that saved her life after spending 42 days in the Intensive Care Unit.
Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium called mycobacterium tuberculosis which usually attacks the lungs (pulmonary TB), but can attack any part of the body (extra pulmonary) such as the kidney, spine, brain, stomach or bones.
Ms Benson, now fully recovered, narrated her ordeal where she was initially treated for a different condition from the one she was later diagnosed with.
“My stomach started swelling in December 2019 and I sought help from a private doctor. I was told I had a hernia and was treated for the condition but I was still swelling. I was given strict instructions to avoid hard work and also to prevent the hernia from being disturbed. The medication I was given was supposed to drain the water that had accumulated in my stomach,” said Ms Benson from Amaveni in Kwekwe.
In 2020, still with the same condition, she went to another hospital for a scan of the abdomen and was again told that it was a hernia. But one nursing sister who was at the hospital advised her to go to a TB clinic and get screened.
“On 17 April, I got very sick and was taken to Kwekwe General Hospital as I was sweating profusely. I had lost a lot of weight and had no appetite at all. I was vomiting all day and I had to be admitted for eight days. I was later transferred to Gweru General Hospital as my condition had worsened. My navel had burst open then and I had an emergency operation.
“That operation gave me problems as I was hospitalised for 42 days in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Later on, the doctors there then took samples of that water that had accumulated in my stomach and it was then that I was diagnosed with TB of the stomach. I was initiated on TB treatment but it was a struggle as the treatment was heavy on me,” said Ms Benson.
After completing her treatment, she gained back her health and lived to tell her story, encouraging people to seek help on time.
“I’m grateful to the doctors who assisted me at Gweru General Hospital as they saved my life. I want to encourage people to take treatment seriously and go to local hospitals when there’s time to be screened for TB because it’s treatable. There’s nothing to be scared of because you have contracted TB,” she said.
Ms Benson said since she was treated and cured, she has never had any challenges and she was happy that the other four members of her family were tested for TB and none of them were found positive.
“While I was on treatment, my family was visited by community health care workers who would give advice on how to care for me and also for themselves as they didn’t want the TB to spread to the rest of the family. They were encouraged to be very hygienic and we were assisted with disposable gloves for when they were cleaning the house,” she added.
Dr Sithabiso Dube, the technical director at the Union Zimbabwe Trust (UZT) sub-recipient to a TB grant from the Global Fund to fight HIV/ Aids, TB and malaria in Zimbabwe said they were supporting the national TB-HIV response in Zimbabwe through the Kunda-Nqobi’TB (KNTB) project.
“Eight districts in three provinces were selected on account of high disease burden, poor TB treatment outcomes and a high concentration of artisanal small-scale miners (ASMs), a risk group for silicosis and TB. The Co-operative Agreement is implemented through a consortium of four partners, UZT (prime), three other local partners; Jointed Hands Welfare Organisation (JHWO), Hospice Palliative Care Association of Zimbabwe (HOSPAZ) and Baines Occupational Health Services (BOHS),” she said.
Dr Dube said under the KN-TB programme, treatment is initiated as early as possible and is directly observed throughout by community health workers and through a trained community or family member. The UZT Project oversight is to strengthen health systems around TB-HIV, Childhood TB and Drug resistant TB. KN-TB has contributed to detection of 7,317 TB cases since project inception in 2019 in Zimbabwe.
However, she said disruptions from emerging public health emergencies like Covid-19 and monkey pox have been a set back together with frequent expert machine breakdowns in some areas.
Dr Rutendo Manyati, the Programmatic Management of Drug Resistant TB Officer at UZT said the organisation was trying to include the private sector in their sensitisation programmes and not limiting it to public health institutions and practitioners only.
“We try to include the private sector in our sensitisation around TB but we do have a challenge in that they are spread across the country and are many in number such that we can’t reach them all. The few that have been trained are doing a good job in assisting people,” she said.
Stigma and discrimination remain a challenge in the fight against tuberculosis in Zimbabwe with more and more people shunning treatment as TB is associated with HIV. Health professionals dismissed this myth saying a person can have TB and still be HIV-negative.
However, according to the Ministry of Health and Child Care, 54 percent of the people who died from TB in Zimbabwe in 2021 were HIV-positive. Ms Benson said she met a lot of stigma in her journey to recovery.
“Before I fell ill, I used to weigh 95kg, but I dropped to 39kg because of the sickness. Now I’m at 75kg after my recovery. Many of my friends failed to come and visit me as they were scared of my condition. I’m glad though that my family didn’t discriminate against me during this period,” said Ms Benson.
She also said people must seek medical attention when they fall ill instead of seeking other interventions that are not conventional.
“People must not visit traditional or faith healers when they have conditions like TB. There’s no help there; go to your public hospital and get screened and treated for TB. I got saved at a public hospital and treatment was free,” she said.
In 2019, there were 21 008 TB notifications, 16 076 for 2020 and 16 480 for 2021. Zimbabwe was moved from the world’s top 30 list of countries heavily burdened by TB in 2021. — @NyembeziMu