Doctors’ group finds 1,280 Tondo residents with TB

MANILA, Philippines — The doctors’ group Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) has diagnosed 1,280 residents in a densely populated area in Tondo, Manila to be afflicted with tuberculosis or TB.

The MSF, or Doctors Without Borders, launched a tuberculosis project in Tondo in partnership with the Manila Health Department (MHD), to address challenges in the screening and treatment of TB after the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the group, it has screened 29,291 people and diagnosed 1,280 patients with TB in Tondo.

“These findings translate to an average positivity rate of 4.3 percent, which is higher than the three percent national positivity rate in the Philippines,” MSF said in a statement.

The MSF started providing TB medications for 141 patients in Tondo in August as “support to MHD, which has been struggling with drug shortages over the past year.”

“This will enable patients whose treatment has been pending for several months to start taking their medication. This will also help patients who started but were unable to complete their treatment because medication stocks were not enough for the completion of the treatment duration,” the MSF said.

Doctors Without Borders attributed the disruption in treatment to recurrent drug shortages at local health centers and to the patients’ economic difficulties in purchasing TB drugs.

TB is one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases and the Philippines is one of the top 10 countries with the highest TB burden, the MSF said.

Based on the 2024 Global TB Report of the World Health Organization, there were 739,000 people in the country who fell ill with TB.