A first case of the deadly drug-resistant (XDR) Tuberculosis (TB) has been recorded in Ghana according to the Ghana Health Service.

The GHS also confirmed that one person has been killed by the drug-resistant disease.

Manager of the TB Control Programme at the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Frank Bonsu, while addressing the media in Accra Friday March 16 urged the public to make an effort to fight the emerging threat.

“We need leaders to fight the menace which is coming to Ghana, the drug-resistant TB, I am not proud to announce to you that Ghana has reported its first case of XDR TB, the TB is resistance to all known treatment,” he said.

According to him, attention needs to be paid to XDR TB  before it becomes an epidemic.

“If we don’t contain and this breaks down as an epidemic we are finished as a country,”he said.

He said as a preventive exercise, relative and neighbours of the deceased will be examined to make sure they have not been affected, whiles Ghanaians would be educated on world TB day on 22nd March about the disease.

Dr. Ofosu said the regional health directorate was working harder to cases of Tuberculosis.

He admitted that the disease had remained a major public health concern globally as current efforts to reach, treat and cure everyone who got ill with the disease had not been sufficient though it is curable.

The rare type of TB known as XDR TB does not respond to standard treatment with first-line anti-TB drugs, and can take up to two years or more to treat with drugs that are less potent, more toxic and much more expensive.