Tuberculosis remains a serious problem in the Philippines, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The ICRC made the statement during Thursday’s inauguration of a new testing facility at the Batangas Medical Center which was built to improve detection of tuberculosis cases in Southern Tagalog.
“There is an immediate need to get back on track and mitigate the spread of TB especially within detention centers. The expansion of the laboratory is a significant contribution to the Philippine government’s efforts to provide adequate health care to detainees and also the wider community,” said Dorsa Nazemi-Salman, deputy head of the ICRC’s delegation in Manila.
The opening of the newly expanded Tuberculosis Culture and Drug Susceptibility Testing Laboratory came in time of the World Tuberculosis Day.
Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) officials said the region has the second most congested jails in the Philippines, making detainees highly vulnerable to the disease.
BMC officials and representatives from the Department of Health, the National TB Reference Laboratory, the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and ICRC, attended the opening of the facility.
Staffed with four technicians trained by the DOH, the laboratory will be the first facility in the region that can detect if a patient has become immune to TB antibiotics.
It will also prioritize testing samples from the Calamba Regional TB Infirmary, where detainees are being treated, and help to ease the load on the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, which used to test the samples.
The launch comes at a time when detention centres in the country are just restarting their TB screening, which was temporarily suspended for close to two years owing to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the World Health Organization’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2021, the Philippines is one of the top countries that saw a huge drop in the number of TB cases reported between 2019 and 2020 because of lack of testing.
The country’s densely congested prisons have become a hotbed of TB, a highly communicable but treatable disease.
During a mass screening effort in detention facilities in the region conducted in 2021, 526 out of 24,035 detainees (2%) tested positive for TB.
Since 2007, the ICRC has been working closely with the Philippine authorities to address the causes and consequences of extreme overcrowding in jails, focusing particularly on health issues and TB, living conditions and delays in the judicial system.
As an impartial, neutral and independent humanitarian organization, the ICRC also works with the authorities to strengthen the overall health system in detention facilities.