16th December, 2010
Women and TB - addressing the scale of the problem
Women suffer disproportionately from this ‘silent’ killer disease
TB is a major cause of death among women in Africa, though there is a real lack of information available on the true scale of the problem, a parliamentary briefing highlighted.
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB held a breakfast reception on 15th December, focusing on ways to address the challenges many women face in accessing TB treatment.
Speakers included: Grace Mukasa, CEO of AMREF UK, Dr Antima Gupta, Fellow, UNESCO-L'Oreal For Women in Science Programme 2010, Birkbeck, University of London, and Andrew Jack, Financial Times journalist.
Grace Mukasa spoke on the situation many poor and vulnerable women with TB face in Africa. Women prioritise caring for their children and husbands over themselves, often making hard choices over using what little money they are given to care for their family.
‘The symptoms of TB are not as well known as HIV. Many people initially confuse TB for HIV, which is why women with TB may be ostracized from their community, or suffer domestic violence as misperception of unfaithfulness,’ Grace Mukasa, CEO AMREF UK
Key issues included:
- TB infection places pregnant women and their babies at a far greater risk. Sick mothers are more likely to pass on the disease to their children and when a woman becomes too sick to look her children, they are often forced to leave school to care for her.
- Women’s cultural values sometimes inhibit the diagnosis of TB; for example, when requested to provide sputum they are more likely to produce saliva for fear of being seen as uncultured women if they have cough up sputum. Women also often first try cough treatment options like using herbs and other medicinal mixtures like honey, ginger juice, mango tree leaves.
- There are 58 countries affected by drug resistant TB and 3.6 million women affected by TB especially of reproductive age, yet there are no drugs to address multi drug resistant TB. TB can be latent yet there is no effective drug to address latent TB.
A call to action
All speakers agreed the need to place more emphasis needed gender specific research into TB. Screening programmes should be increased, particularly for pregnant women.
In addition, there is a real need to educate women to overcome stigma, and to address more of women’s needs when programming for TB.
AMREF empowers women to access health services, raising awareness of the symptoms of TB and providing good quality, accessible treatment to those who need it most. Find out more about AMREF's work on preventing and treating TB.