About 67,603 tuberculosis patients are currently on treatment in nine states as of March 31, according to Programme Manager, State Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Buruli Ulcer Control, Dr Ibrahim Umar.
He listed Kano, Bauchi, Benue, FCT, Lagos, Osun, Oyo, Nasarawa and Katsina as the affected states.
According to him, Nigeria has the highest number of TB patients in Africa, with many undiagnosed and undetected patients.
Umar said that there was a low awareness programme of the disease, in spite of the existence of free diagnosis and treatment programmes.
He said a large percentage of TB patients could not afford the adequate nutrition required to sustain treatment adherence.
The manager said a large number of TB Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) centres were dilapidated, and the majority of identified Collaborative Ocular Tuberculosis (COT) centres were inadequately equipped with testing equipment.
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He called for strategic collaboration with the private sector to upgrade and reactivate DOT sites in project states.
Umar acknowledged that Nigeria had made substantial progress in TB control, stressing that more effort was required to meet the global target of ending TB by 2030.
According to the World Health Organisation, tuberculosis is a contagious and potentially life-threatening infectious disease that mainly affects the lungs.
The disease is caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
It spreads from person to person through the air when people with lung TB cough, sneeze or spit.
The health agency noted that a person needed to inhale only a few germs to become infected, adding that every year, 10 million people fall ill with tuberculosis.
It added that despite being a preventable and curable disease, 1.5 million people die from TB each year, making it the world’s top infectious killer.
Umar said: ”The Nigerian government set a 50 per cent target for domestic funding for TB by 2025 against a baseline of eight per cent in 2019.
“Currently, we are below 20 per cent as of 2023, showing we are far from our target with only one year left.”