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Government hails new TB detection system for improved reporting
While hailing more detected cases as an important milestone towards Indonesia's tuberculosis eradication vision, experts warn the government against complacency as health authorities still need more work to do in finding and treating more patients off the infectious respiratory disease.
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A health worker (left) takes a chest X-ray of a patient on March 21, 2023 at Tangerang City General Regional Hospital in Banten. (Antara/Fauzan)
T
he government has hailed an improved system to detect tuberculosis (TB), which contributed to an increase in reported cases last year, as an important milestone in eradicating TB the disease by the end of this decade.
Experts have cautioned health authorities against potential complacency, however, as the country still had a lot of work to do in identifying and treating patients.
The Health Ministry detected 809,000 out of an estimated 1 million TB cases in 2023, the highest number ever recorded, according to a statement the ministry issued on Monday.
The ministry said the figure marked progress in the country’s efforts to eradicate the disease, attributing the increased reporting to the government’s integrated TB detection system that used real-time data.
The new system enabled health workers to immediately report suspected TB cases to an online platform, according to the statement. This had led to an improved case detection rate, from around 40 percent of estimated nationwide TB cases before the COVID-19 pandemic to 68 percent at present.
Despite such strides, epidemiologist Riris Andono Ahmad from Gadjah Mada University (UGM) said the government still had more work to do in detecting TB cases, given the wide gap between the numbers of reported and estimated cases.
According to the 2023 Global TB Report of the World Health Organization (WHO), Indonesia is the second-highest contributor of global TB cases as of 2022 with over 1 million cases, or 385 cases per 100,000 population. It is only surpassed by India with 2.8 million cases.
