With an aim of eradicating tuberculosis, the Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, will launch a campaign, 'Kick TB’, to rally primary school learners to be TB champions.
The pilot ‘Kick TB’ campaign will be launched at Greenbury Primary School, in Phoenix, on 2 June 2010. It is aimed at raising awareness of the TB disease to school learners and to ensure that they become champions of the campaign.
The campaign will afterwards be rolled out to other provincial schools which are among the 300 identified health promoting schools countrywide.
Until recently, the approaches to TB care and control have been focused mostly on adults with very limited scope to the contribution by children in adopting prevention practices and their influence on adults and families.
And yet, the issue of children's involvement in the health promotion and in the adoption of preventative health practices and them being messengers of good news to parents and care givers has never been explored. It is for this reason that the Department of Health will be piloting the ‘Kick TB’ campaign with an aim of working with children to control the spread of TB in homes, communities and society.
During the campaign launch, Minister Motsoaledi will be joined by KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, government representatives, senior staff members from the KwaZulu-Natal Departments of Basic Education and Health.
KwaZulu-Natal is one of the leading provinces with a very high TB disease burden in the country. The current TB cases are around 119 000 cases per annual. 83 percent of these cases are pulmonary TB cases.
The province has also seen a drop in smear positivity from 55 percent to 45 percent which can be attributed to the number of active TB cases due to HIV. The baseline for the sputa conversion rate was 35,5 percent (after two months) and this has drastically improved to 63,7 percent.
Three schools have been identified in Southern KwaZulu-Natal province to participate in the pilot project. They are: Greenbury (in Phoenix), Kusakusa (KwaMakhutha) and Zakhele (in Claremont) primary schools.
Prior the official campaign launch by Minister Aaron Motsoaledi on 2 June 2010 at Greenbury Primary School, the Health department officials jointly with the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Basic Education officials will respectively pay an hourly visit to educate learners of Zakhele and Kusakusa primary schools about TB.
Kusakusa Primary school will be visited on 26 May 2010 and Zakhele Primary School on the subsequent day both between 08h00 and 09h00.
The ‘Kick TB’ campaign forms part of the recently launched massive HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT) campaign where people are also screened for the diseases such as TB.
The media is invited to the launch of the ‘Kick TB’ campaign by Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi and the KZN MEC for Health, scheduled as follows:
Event name: Launch of the ‘Kick TB’ campaign
Date: 2 June 2010
Venue: Greenbury Primary School (Phoenix)
Time: 08h00 to 09h00
For more information, kindly contact:
Fidel Hadebe
Cell: 079 517 3333
Chris Maxon
Cell: 083 285 0576
Issued by: Department of Health
1 June 2010
