The incidence of tuberculosis, including among children, is growing in Ukraine.
About this at a briefing at the Ukraine-Ukrinform media center said Deputy Minister of Health, Chief State Sanitary Doctor Igor Kuzin.
«Over the last year, about 20 thousand cases of tuberculosis and 640 cases among children have been registered in Ukraine; among children we are also registering an increase in the number of cases of the disease.” , he noted.
As Kuzin added, in the world and Europe in particular, there is also a tendency to increase the number of cases of tuberculosis. Global tuberculosis rates have risen by at least 4% over the past year.
The flood pandemic affected how willing patients were to turn to the medical system and family doctors, he said.
In Ukraine, the chief state sanitary doctor noted, the current situation with the incidence of tuberculosis is a distant consequence of the pandemic and is complicated by a full-scale war, decreased access of the population to medical care, and security issues that do not allow the widespread deployment of preventive programs.
At the same time, , Kuzin added, Ukraine has enough innovative approaches to the treatment of tuberculosis; donors also provide innovative medicines, the use of which allows treating tuberculosis from 6 to 9 months, whereas previously this period was a year or two, updated treatment protocols used in the world.
Separately, he noted that one of the problems is giving BCG vaccinations to children at birth. Up to 5% of parents refuse vaccination, which can cause further health problems for the child. At the same time, according to Kuzin, over the past 2-3 years there have been no problems with providing medical institutions with the BCG vaccine, as long as the number of vaccines is sufficient. Also, one of the reasons for refusing vaccination is medical contraindications, when a child has certain conditions at birth and vaccination is postponed until this condition is stabilized. The BCG vaccine is used in the first month of life, that is, as quickly as possible. At the end of 2023, unfortunately, Ukraine did not achieve 95% vaccination. Most often, the problem we face is the refusal of parents, primarily due to a lack of understanding that this vaccine protects,” Kuzin said.
According to him, the picture differs depending on the region, but on average, vaccination against tuberculosis is now at 85%.
“But this indicator is calculated based on the population size used by the State Statistics Service, so the actual number of vaccinations and actual coverage are slightly higher,” added Kuzin.
So far, as the head of the department for managing and combating tuberculosis said at a briefing Yan Terleev Public Health Center, the highest incidence of tuberculosis is recorded in the Odessa, Kirovograd, Dnepropetrovsk, Transcarpathian and Volyn regions.
According to her, due to the war, Ukraine is now one of the countries with a high incidence of tuberculosis. Another feature of the situation is the spread of drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis. Therefore, the main thing is to quickly seek medical help and follow the doctor’s recommendations and not interrupt treatment.
As Terleeva added, the effectiveness of treatment is 89%, the average time to prescribe treatment after identifying the disease is 6 days.
<p As Ukrinform reported, in Ukraine over the past week, 153,537 people fell ill with ARVI, influenza and COVID-19, of which 90,273 — children.