As Tuberculosis continues to increase on a daily basis with over 120 people getting infected every single day, Minister for Health Elias Kapavore launched the “PNG National TB Summit 2025”, declaring the country at war to fight and eliminate TB in PNG by 2035.
The TB summit scheduled for August 12-14th of this year, will start of firstly with a TB fundraiser dinner that’s set for the 30th of July as a start towards the TB program to address it and reduce it.
“So why not, on the 30th of July, all the members of parliament and partners show up and let’s talk about TB. Its serious enough and we need to end it!”
He said, the statistics are seriously alarming and called for urgency and a collaborative effort from the government down to the communities to combat this together.
According to statistics from NDoH, an estimation of about 226, 712 cases of TB were recorded from 2020-2024, 187 128 (82%) patients are on treatment, a total of 62% of people successfully treated, 24% of children infected with TB and a total of 57% patients tested for HIV with 8% of them positive.
He said, TB is a top killer in PNG and in 2024, a total of 46, 016 patients and families suffered from this infectious disease with an estimation of 3, 400 people dying from TB alone in the same year.
Under his watch, Minister Kapavore challenged the public health team to have intervention plans in place to seriously address this issue.
“We have enough partners in the group, all we need is the helping hand, and to establish the way forward to end TB in the country.”
He stated that, though the stats are alarming, it shows a clear way forward on what the department, partners and the country as a whole need to do to bring the numbers down and eventually, eliminate and eradicate TB in PNG.
Minister Kapavore said, the vision to end TB by 2035 is a very long period and called on the department to come up with 2-year short-term strategies along with 6-month clear-cut approach for all 22 provinces to provide a way forward to end it.
Furthermore, to tackle this issue, he announced that through the NCD Governor’s Office, a sum of K6 million will be invested to build a state-of-the-art TB Hospital located at 6mile.