Before the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the common grave assumptions of people when seeing an individual coughing sporadically was afflicted with tuberculosis. In the present, while everyone was focusing on the COVID-19 virus, tuberculosis is still out there spreading behind the curtain of COVID-19.
Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis that mainly attacks the lungs or may affect in other parts of the body. An individual may be infected with TB when they inhaled an infected person’s cough or air droplets from sneeze and spit.
According to the World Health Organization, in 2019, Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the top 10 causes of death and the leading cause from a single infectious agent worldwide having a total of 1.4 million people died from it. Moreover, although TB is curable and preventable, in 2019, an estimated 10 million people fell ill with TB worldwide. 5.6 million men, 3.2 million women and 1.2 million children. In the Philippines, TB is one of the leading causes of death and a major public health concern.
To raise public awareness about the detrimental effects of TB on health, economy and society and to step-up efforts in ending TB globally, All countries worldwide were enjoined every 24th of March to commemorate the World Tuberculosis Day.
While the Department of Health has a National Tuberculosis Control Program which provides quality services to presumptive TB and TB affected households, The National Nutrition Council give its support through promoting good nutrition to prevent the disease from developing and to improve the success of TB medication.
TB can be active or latent, the earlier develops symptoms once acquired while the latter is dormant in the body. The latent type of TB occurs when an individual has TB bacteria within their body but are kept under control by the body’s immune system and thus do not cause symptoms or spread to other people however, the bacteria persist in small numbers and may activate once the body’s immune system weakens. Immune system heavily relies in the nutrients a person’s eats thus to ward off TB and other infectious diseases, good nutrition is a topmost priority.
For individuals with active TB, loss of appetite is one of its symptoms that leads to undernutrition. It is strongly recommended for a TB patient to be counselled by a nutritionist-dietitian for a proper dietary recommendation for recovery during TB medication.
For a simple and easy to-use guide for good nutrition, 10 Kumainments can be used. 10 Kumainments is a popularized version of Nutritional Guidelines for the Filipinos developed by the National Nutrition Council which contains messages that aims to improve eating habits and behaviors. On the other hand, Food and Nutrition Research Institute of DOST has developed Pinggang Pinoy, an easy-to-understand food guide that uses a familiar food plate model to convey the right food group proportions on a per-meal basis. This will help in acquiring healthy eating habits needed to attain good nutrition.
Good nutrition and healthy lifestyle is our foremost defense against most infectious diseases and with proper treatment, we can end the spread of TB.
Source/s:
WHO, Tuberculosis facts (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis)
WHO, 2017, Guideline: Nutritional Care and Support for Patients with Tuberculosis
Tbfacts.org, Nutrition & TB - Malnutrition, under nutrition, assessment (https://tbfacts.org/nutrition-tb/)
