Shortage of TB drugs rocks the country

Tuberculosis (TB) patients and People Living with HIV (PLWHIV) in the country are facing difficulties as health facilities have run out of TB medicines- in the last two months.

The future for these patients even looks more miserable for what they only have to contend with are daily promises from Afya House that the drugs will be distributed to the health facilities.

The previous week, after constant inquiries by the patients through several advocates, the Ministry of Health assured that the drugs would be available in the hospitals at the end of last week, but that did not happen either.

“I was promised that the medicines would be in the hospitals by the end of last week, but I am shocked that the clients are still being turned away even today,” said Evaline Kibuchi, the Chief National Coordinator of Stop TB Partnership-Kenya, last evening.

She noted that looking at the number of cases in the country with numbers soaring due to some risk factors, there is a likelihood of missing more people for treatment who have already been diagnosed, and even those suspected to be positive.

“TB is a highly stigmatized disease leading to self-isolation of the patients and in most cases by the public,” she said, indicating that about 30 per cent of the patients have been reported to use drugs, alcohol and other substances perceived to be a way of dealing with their mental health.

Some of the risk factors associated with the disease in Kenya include; 1,282 TB patients with alcoholism; 859 smokers who are on treatment for TB; 117 TB cases that abuse drugs, while 76.3 per cent of teenagers with TB reviewed for substance abuse, were found to use alcohol, and those using drugs are 66.4 percent.

In Nairobi, community TB champions, mainly drawn from the City’s informal settlements, staged a protest at a city hotel where they were meeting for the launch of the Community Action Clubs (CACs), the Nairobi County branch.

CHPs speak on TB medicine unavailability

The protesters, most of them Community Health Promoters (CHPs), demanded for immediate supply of the medicines.

Stephen Ochieng Omondi, a resident of Mathare told People Daily Digital that there is a huge problem that the TB drugs stock-out in most of the health facilities in the sprawling informal settlement is running into the third month now.

“Currently we have a huge problem; all health facilities in Mathare don’t have TB drugs. When we ask, we are told that drugs have been distributed to the hospitals but when clients go there, they are turned away without doses,” Omondi said.

He revealed that many people are suffering silently in their houses because they don’t know who to turn to.

“So we urge the government to do something because it can’t sit there and watch as its people die from preventable fatality,” he urged, cautioning that this latest stock-out should turn out to be like the KEMSA scandal, where the medicines were there but they could not be distributed to places they were needed. He urged President William Ruto to intervene.

Mary Wanza, a CHP from Mabatini Ward in Mathare sub-county said this challenge has been noted in the last two months.

“We send clients but they are tossed from clinic to clinic, and if they are lucky to get medicines, they can only get it for two or four days. Now the question is, if they miss this treatment, are we not going to lose them?” she posed, stating that there is no option, but to get the drugs or risk losing the patients to herbal alternatives, a thing of the past.

She is worried about her three clients.

On her part, Joyce Adhiambo who has lived with HIV for 20 years, but now with undetectable viral load, is worried for 20 of her friends who are on treatment for TB.

“They are yet to get their drugs since they were put on treatment because the medicines are not sufficient and this forces them to share,” she said, further expressing concern that most of them risk developing resistance as the TB drugs are meant to be consumed daily.

“I know about 100 clients who go to the clinic and get just drugs for one week, instead of a whole dose,” she said.

Adhiambo noted that the shortage of TB drugs in the country is now a major concern for those who are HIV-positive because TB is an opportunistic disease that kills them.

If they don’t have TB drugs, she pointed out that these patients will die, but also observed that if TB is treated, such people have a lease of life.

“So we urge the government to supply drugs to health facilities as fast as possible so that the patients can access these drugs and help them survive for long,” she said.

Wilfred Omari, a clinician with AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) Kenya said that the shortage has been a big issue because most of the AHF clients can’t access the drugs.

He said this has become a very big challenge in the AHF clinic in Nairobi where four new TB cases are diagnosed every week. The last time the clinic went for drugs they were given two packs for the four clients that they diagnose every week.

“So we would like to urge the government to help us to fast track the restocking of the drugs,” he said.

Every pack is equal to one client. On average, monthly the clinic sees 12 clients who are newly diagnosed with TB, and again it’s only the two packs the clinic gets that are supposed to last for two clients.

“This means that the newly diagnosed TB cases are not going to be on treatment, implying that the spread of TB is going to continue. It means again that in future we will have so many TB cases that are not on treatment, and this means more transmission of TB in the community,” he added.

Apart from the drugs, the other missing supplies according to Omari, are cartridges for TB screening, the GenExpert, which also lead to low uptake of diagnosis of TB.

“The GenExpert cartridges are not sufficient enough for the samples that are sent to the lab,” he noted.

In TaitaTaveta, it’s the same story as patients are turned away for the last two months.

“We have only two kits that we took from Tanzania though no client has been sent home for lack of medicines,” said Jeniffer Mwandawiro, a TB champion in the County.

She said that one kit has already been used with the other only one remaining, and they are yet to receive a new consignment.