Mabuza encourages inter-faith leaders to use their influence to help fight spread of TB and HIV

Deputy President David Mabuza has encouraged inter-faith leaders in the Frances Baard District Municipality to use their influence in their communities and places of worship to deal with social ills that perpetuate the spread of HIV and Tuberculosis (TB) among other diseases.

Mabuza is holding a series of engagements ahead of the World TB Day Commemoration on Thursday March 24.

He was accompanied by Minister of Health, Dr. Joe Phaahla; Premier of Northern Cape, Dr. Zamani Saul and SANAC Civil Society Chairperson, Steve Letsike among others.

This year’s theme for World TB Day is ‘Invest in Action to End TB NOW! Get Screened. End Stigma. Save Lives.’

World TB Day aims to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of TB, and to step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic.

TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers.

Each day, over 4100 people lose their lives to TB and close to 28,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease.

Global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 66 million lives since the year 2000.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress made in the fight to end TB and for the first time in over a decade, TB deaths increased in 2020.

South Africa is among the nations hardest hit by TB and the infection has remained the leading cause of death in our country for several years.

Mabuza said there are a number of social ills including TB, gender-based violence (GBV), teen pregnancy among other that continue to disrupt the very essence of South Africans social fabric of society.

“All of us as partners working together, we can defeat these social ills. Those that are related to health, our health as a society, those pandemics and those social ills can be curable and we can avoid them by taking treatment and lead a normal life. Our people should not continue to die because of HIV and Aids, our people should not die because of TB, STI’s. Our people should not continue to die of Covid-19.”

“These are things we can prevent, working together as a society,” Mabuza said.

Mabuza has also urged traditional healers to work together with the Department of Health when treating infectious diseases.

“We want to be part of you as we confront all these pandemics and all these challenges. The appeal on our side is that we must work together with our Department of Health so that as we treat our people, we know exactly whose doing what, when and how, so that our traditional healers and our nurses in hospital work together because you have got the same constituency.”

Mabuza said in the last discussion in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, a pledge was signed with traditional leaders agreeing that government was going to partner with traditional leaders in their traditional communities to fight pandemics.