Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Located: Manayingkarírra Primary Health Centre
Post: PO Box 136, Maningrida 0822 NT
Email: sophie.carey@malala.com.au
Phone: 0494 167 024
Tuberculosis (TB) is an illness caused by bacteria that usually affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. It can make people sick with cough, weakness and tiredness, losing weight and fever.
TB disease is when someone gets sick with symptoms. When TB affects a person’s lungs, it can spread to other people through the air.
TB infection (also called latent TB or sleeping TB) is when someone breathes in the TB bacteria, but they don’t get sick with symptoms, and they can’t spread it to other people. However, the TB bacteria could make them sick in the future.
TB can be treated and prevented!
More than 10 million people get sick with TB around the world each year. TB affects people in Maningrida, other communities in the Northern Territory and other parts of Australia.
We’re working with different health organisations to end TB in Maningrida and the surrounding outstations and provide better care for people and families affected by TB.
REACT team
Our TB program is lead by the Remote Aboriginal Communities ending Tuberculosis in the Top End (REACT) project team made up of TB experts and project officers from Menzies School of Health Research, and Aboriginal community health workers and health practitioners from Mala’la.
Team members include:
- Rachel Brian, Aboriginal Community Health Worker (Mala’la)
- Sophie Carey, Tuberculosis Nurse (Mala’la)
- Binh Van Phan, Senior Project Officer (Mala’la)
- Emma Smith, Infectious Diseases Consultant & PhD student (Menzies)
- Chris Lowbridge, Tuberculosis Program Lead (Menzies)
- Jobe Bonney, Project Support Officer (Menzies)
The REACT study aims to end the spread of TB in Top End communities.
We can achieve this by diagnosing people with TB disease earlier before they get sick and spread TB to others and providing treatment to people with TB infection to prevent them getting sick with TB in the future.
Some of the ways we’re doing this are:
- Community engagement
- Raising awareness
- Taking services to the community e.g. TB nurses in communities and portable chest x-rays
- Training and upskilling healthcare staff.
Resources
- Remote Aboriginal Communities Ending Tuberculosis (menzies.edu.au)
- Tuberculosis in the Northern Territory (health.nt.gov.au)
- More information on TB (healthdirect.gov.au)
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