A five-year tuberculosis program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the American government’s aid agency, ended in mid-2019 with treatment success rates for tuberculosis patients in Ethiopia above 90 percent, according to a U.S. government statement published on ReliefWeb. The Challenge TB project spent $42 million across all nine regions of the country to improve how health workers find, diagnose and treat the disease.
The statement said tuberculosis deaths had dropped significantly. It said 75 percent of patients with multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, a form of the disease that does not respond to the main standard medicines, were now able to beat it after completing their treatment.
The project worked with the Ministry of Health and regional health bureaus in support of Ethiopia’s Health Sector Transformation Plan. It focused on training health workers to detect the disease, make accurate diagnoses and prescribe medicine quickly so patients could start treatment early. It was carried out by the KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Management Sciences for Health and the World Health Organization.
According to the statement, the United States was the largest single-country donor to Ethiopia’s health sector, giving about $150 million a year for tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, malaria, mother and child health, nutrition, and water and sanitation. It said Washington had provided about $4 billion in development and humanitarian aid to Ethiopia over the previous five years.
Sources: ReliefWeb (USAID)