Success of the control of tuberculosis in Nigeria: a review

Tuberculosis (TB) has emerged as the single leading cause of death from any single infectious agent and has continued to be a major public health problem all over the world. Of the over 14 million cases worldwide reported by World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2008, Nigeria ranked fifth in terms of incidence. Depending on the prevailing social factors such as socioeconomic status of the people, malnutrition, crowded living conditions, incidence of HIV/AIDS, level of development of health infrastructures, quality of available control programmes, degree of drug resistance to anti-tuberculous agents, etc, prevalence, patterns of presentation, and outcomes of treatment from TB can vary from one country to another and from one region of a country to the other. Attempts to deal with the problems of the disease led to the development of Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS) by WHO in 1995, and more recently the Stop TB strategy in 2006. In Nigeria, the DOTS programme has been implemented in all States and local government areas in the country and 3,000 DOTS centres have been operating across the country since 2006. This article reviewed the available information on the success of the control of TB in Nigeria has observed a significant improvement in TB detection and treatment. However, neither the set target for the detection rate nor the cure rate have been achieved nationally as several challenges have militated against the effective implementation of the DOTS programme. Keywords: Tuberculosis control, treatment success, DOTS programme, Stop TB strategy