The Western Cape Department of Health, Metro Health Services and City of Cape Town, with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have committed to an ambitious effort to magnify their focus on Tuberculosis from 2021 onwards.
Cape Town, March 24 (ANA) To commemorate World Tuberculosis (TB) Day on 24 March 2021, the Western Cape Government, City of Cape Town and their partners officially unveiled the mobile X-ray clinic, which has been screening medical staff for TB since 1 March 2021, at Brooklyn Chest Hospital in Cape Town.
The Western Cape Department of Health, Metro Health Services and City of Cape Town, with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have committed to an ambitious effort to magnify their focus on Tuberculosis from 2021 onwards.
This 3-year program will provide catalytic funding of R80 million to work on rapidly identifying people with TB, linking them to care and ensuring that patients are effectively treated. This effort is based on using a combination of innovation and the wealth of data available through the Provincial Health Data Centre to drive a patient centric approach to TB control in the Western Cape. Globally, it is estimated that the Covid-19 pandemic has set back the fight against TB by between 5 and 8 years and could result in an additional 6.3 million cases of TB between 2020 and 2025.