The Premier of the Free State, Mme Sisi Ntombela together with the MEC for Health, Mme Montseng Tsiu will preside over a World TB Day event that will be held at Bluegumbosch Stadium in QwaQwa on Sunday, 24 March 2019 starting at 10am. The theme for this year is “IT’S TIME! For Religious Leaders, Parliamentarians and Legislators to Lead the Fight to End TB in South Africa.”
The occasion of the World TB Day commemoration is an opportunity to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic impact of tuberculosis (TB) and urge all Free Staters and South Africans to join efforts to end the global TB epidemic.
The commitment of the government of the Free State is to end TB by treating the infected people to completion.
The health programmes are implemented to intensify efforts of tracing those who are defaulters who get lost to follow up and end up not completing their treatment.
It must be emphasized that not completing your treatment is a health risk as it leads to development and proliferation of drug resistant forms of TB which unfortunately get spread by the infected people who are not on treatment.
“It is important to get all people in various leadership positions in society to take a firm stance to support efforts aimed at testing, treating and ending the devastating scourge of TB”, said Montseng Tsiu.
“I am super proud of our Premier Mme Sisi Ntombela who has committed herself to lead from the front and champion programmes aimed at tackling and ending scourge of TB together with the partners in the Provincial Council on AIDS. We further encourage our people to attend the public awareness events and our media to play its part in highlighting the importance of getting people to visit our health facilities to check their health status, to get treated and for them to complete their treatment” concluded Montseng Tsiu.