Additionally, the World Bank Group said it had invested $130 million in a parallel programme to scale up TB prevention and treatment in the mining sector in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Lesotho.

A statement released by the World Bank on February 27 said the grant would support TB awareness, testing and treatment programmes for the mining sector workforce in Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The fund would be administered by the Wits Health Consortium, which was appointed to act as the Principal Recipient on behalf of the 10 countries. “TB is one of the world’s most deadly diseases, killing three people every minute. Each year, nine million people develop TB, and 1.5 million die from the disease.

“TB is particularly a problem in the Southern Africa mining sector, a key driver for economic growth in the region. In South Africa alone, TB rates within the gold mining workforce are estimated at 2,500-3,000 cases per 100,000 individuals. This incidence is 10 times the World Health Organisation's (WHO) threshold of 250 per 100,000 for a health emergency,” the statement said.

Further, the World Bank said prolonged exposure to silica dust, poor living conditions, high HIV prevalence, poverty, circular movement of mine-workers across provincial and national borders and a poor cross-border health referral system were among the key factors behind the high prevalence of TB among mineworkers in the region.

The programme is part of the World Bank’s Southern Africa TB in the Mining Sector Initiative, which is a multi-stakeholder effort involving representatives from the 10 countries, representatives from the ministries of health, mineral resources, labour unions and mining companies.

It also includes representatives from development agencies, civil society and research institutions. To date, the initiative has made progress in the development of a cross-border tracking system for monitoring adherence to TB treatment for mine-workers, improvement of mine-workers’ living and working conditions by private sector companies and improved access to occupational health services to ex-mine-workers.

The WB said it had also succeeded in linking ex-mine-workers to compensation services, increased advocacy on TB and found new models to search for active TB cases as well as diagnosis and treatment.

World Bank Team Leader for the Southern Africa TB in the Mining Sector Initiative, Dr Patrick Osese, said the tuberculosis awareness, diagnosis and treatment programme is aimed at achieving two main developmental goals in the push for healthy societies in the region.

“TB is not only a disease of poverty, but it also creates poverty and is a threat to global health security. Our goal in southern Africa is therefore to achieve the World Bank’s twin goals of ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity by 2030 through a targeted focus on addressing the drivers of TB in the mining sector,” he said.

Apart from the Global Fund grant, the World Bank Group has invested $120 million in a parallel regional project to scale up TB prevention and treatment in the mining industry in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Lesotho.

The UK Department for International Development has allocated a separate £2 million grant which has been pooled with another $4 million from the World Bank Group Development Grant Facility to fund a pilot project for the regional TB treatment initiative.

ANA