- SA health official still demands release of infectious
XDR-TB patients from quarantine:
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- JOHANNESBURG, South Africa. April 5 2007 -- The
South African XDR-TB epidemic has now reached the landlocked mountain kingdom
of Lesotho which is surrounded by South Africa, where it is showing
a kill-rate of 85% of its patients already, warns Dr Kevin de Cock, World
Health Organisation TB-expert, speaking at the Aids conference in Durban
yesterday.
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- Financier George Soros has responded to the XDR-TB epidemic
in South Africa by immediately pledging $3-million to finance the
XDR-TB identification and treatment programme in neighbouring Lesotho. His
efforts were warmly welcomed by Lesotho senator, Dr. Mphu Ramatlapeng,
the American-trained Minister of Health and Social Welfare for the kingdom.
(contact info: Telephone +266-22317707 or 22324561 Fax +266- 22321014 Email
:
- ict@health.gov.ls
- http://www.health.gov.ls/minister/default.php
-
- Meanwhile Dr Ms M K Matsau, a deputy-general of
South Africa's Department of Health (DOH) has been insisting that
forcibly-quarantined XDR-TB patients at the high-security state-run Sizwe
Tropical Diseases Hospital in Rietfontein near Johannesburg must be
released back into the community at once because their human rights are
being violated. there are at least 168 drug-resistant patients in quarantine
there.
-
- Ms Matsau was unofficially left in charge of
the department while her Minister was undergoing a liver transplant. Ms
Matsau went on record on April 5 2007 as saying that it was DOH policy
not to infringe on the 'human rights' of any XDR-TB patients by "forcibly
detaining" them:
- "There are much more acceptable humane ways
of dealing with this infection control than forcibly incarcerating anybody,"
she said -- thus ignoring the scientific advice of the government's
own TB-experts at Sizwe hospital, who refuse to release the XDR-TB
patients in quarantine there, warning that they continue to pose a
serious infection threat to society and could infect many thousands
of people within just a few days.
- News clip video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Zz5lI3Hc5Xc
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- 168 'drug-resistant' patients at Sizwe hospital for Tropical
Diseases
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- In December last year, TB patients at Sizwe hospital
had rebelled and taken control of their hospital ward. Officials said some
of those patients had drug-resistant TB. The patients themselves claimed
they had not seen a doctor for two months, and demanded "passes"
to leave the hospital. The police then temporarily moved these protesting
patients to a more secure hospital in Pretoria, until security on Sizwe
wards could be tightened. There's now a permanent police guard posted outside
the gates. In March 2007 the Sizwe Hospital manager said they were
now holding 168 patients 'with drug resistant TB' -- including 18
children.
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- Sizwe Hospital contact information: (27) (0) 61-281133.
(27) 11-9331100. (27) 11- 892144 - the hospital CEO available for
media comment is Mrs Elizma van Staden.
- http://www.joburg.org.za/2004/nov/nov26_sizwe.stm
-
- "Not all TB-patients are infectious" - the
online debate in South Africa
- http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?area=/insight/monitor/&articleid=302194
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- Doctors at Sizwe said since these XDR-TB infected
patients cannot be cured with any existing drugs, they remain highly
infectious and cannot be released into the community. The Johannesburg
High Court must now decide their fate. The court date has not yet
been set.
-
- Meanwhile Mrs Tshabalala-Msimang, who apparently returned
to work on June 1 2007 with her new liver working perfectly, has not
rescinded this official policy. Her first public act was to snub an
international Aids conference because she had not been placed on the agenda
as one of the guest speakers. She has not spoken a word in public as yet
about the XDR-TB epidemic - which has now invaded the neighbouring mountain
kingdom of Lesotho.
- LINK: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=310594
&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national
-
- Background on Manto: The SA health minister received
medical training at the First Leningrad Medical Institute in the Soviet
Union from 1962-1969 when in exile with the then-outlawed ANC, trained
as a registrar in obstetrics and gynecology in Tanzania in 1972; received
a master's degree in public health from the University of Antwerp in Belgium;
worked as Registrar in the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Section of the Muhimbili
Hospital in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania and served as Medical Superintendent
of the Lobatse Hospital in Botswana before returning to SA with the exiled
ANC leaders.
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- Her speech on May 30 2007, read out to the Human Rights
Commission, made no mention of the growing health crisis around XDR-TB
and MDR-TB. She merely noted that "poverty, poor nutrition and
migration ... provided favourable conditions for spread ofc ommunicable
diseases such as TB and HIV and AIDS." (Her emphasis on referring
to "HIV and AIDS" instead of HIV-AIDS is deliberate: her
department still refuses to officially accept that there is a link
between the human-immune deficiency virus and full-blown Aids.)
-
- $350,000 for retrofitting extra isolation wards
- Pres. Mbeki finally appointed an acting health minister,
Jeff Radebe in December -- who did address the XDR-TB issue in a prepared
ministerial speech on "TB awareness day", saying that an extra
R3.5-million (about $350,000) had been allocated in the budget for
"infection renovation projects": i.e. creating isolation wards
in existing hospitals, retrofitting extractor fans and ultraviolet lights
inside hospitals, and buying respirator masks for health workers and
visitors. The DOH also rushed through the legal registration
of two antibiotics 'necessary for treatment of XDR-TB' namely Capreomycin
and Para-aminosalicylic acid (PAS).
- Lowest TB-cure rate and highest number of TB-infections:
East London, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Johannesburg:
- The Eastern Cape around Port Elizabeth and East London
were identified by Radebe as one of the four countrywide districts
with both the highest number of TB cases and also the lowest cure rates
-- indicating that MDR-TB and XDR-TB were increasingly problematic there
-- and equally problematic were the entire city of greater Johannesburg
in Gauteng and the entire Durban metropolitan area in KwaZulu-Natal.
- "TB is curable"
-
-
- Radebe concluded his speech by saying: "the theme
for this year reminds all of us in the world that we are vulnerable to
TB. It is therefore our collective responsibility to combat this disease.
We need to remember that TB is curable."
-
- http://www.doh.gov.za/docs/whatsnew-f.html
- http://www.doh.gov.za/docs/sp/sp0530-f.html
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- Hundreds of millions are latent TB carriers in
Africa -- warns WHO expert
-
- Dr. Kevin de Cock, Belgian-born head of WHO's HIV-AIDS
department in Switzerland, told the Third South African AIDS Conference
in June 2007 (and which was snubbed by SA's health minister) that 'traditional
treatments for Africa's rampant TB problem could worsen the AIDS epidemic
and fuel the spread of the potentially fatal lung infection. TB programmes
alone cannot reverse the tide, " de Cock told some 4,000 Aids
researchers, activists and healthcare officials at the conference in Durban.
-
- http://www.sa-aidsconference.com/
-
- "Hundreds of millions of people in Africa are
latent TB-carriers , but the growing relationship between TB and HIV has
made treatment of both much more difficult," he told the conference.
-
- (contact Dr de Cock: Press queries through Iqbal
Nandra, WHO Media officer, Tel: (Switzerland) +41 22 791 5589, Mobile:
+41 79 509 06 22
- http://www.who.int/hiv/mediacentre/news59/en/index.html
-
- 85% death rate in Lesotho of XDR-TB
-
- He warned that "extremely drug resistant TB is a
strain virtually immune to traditional and modern antibiotics and has raised alarm
bells - it has now surfaced not only in South Africa but also in the (land-locked,
tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho, which is surrounded by South Africa). "XDR-TB
is already killing 85% of those infected. The majority of those patients
also had the human-immune deficiency virus which leads to Aids," he
noted.
-
- 61% of annual 250,000 TB patients are HIV+ in South Africa
-
- The conference also heard that in South Africa, 61 percent
of the annual 250,000 people diagnosed with TB also have HIV. Ordinary
TB is still being diagnosed using methods such as skin tests that
can take days or even weeks to complete. Treatment ranges from 6 months
to a year. The conference heard that a new urine-based dipstick test
is now under development which gives almost instant results -- and
could be the answer to diagnosing TB rapidly and much more widely among
the general population.
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