- Have 2 Million South Africans Already Died Of XDR-TB
Since 2000?
-
- DOKKUM, The Netherlands --
Among the World Health Organisation public archives, I located several
little-known studies proving that at least 2-million people must already
have died in South Africa -- of a condition then described as "HIV-TB
co-infection", but which now is known as Extremely-drug-resistant
tuberculosis (XDR-TB), thus-named because none of the usual antibiotics
against TB cures it. XDR-TB now kills its South African carriers within
14 to 20 days.
-
- Often the SA laboratories can confirm the condition only
after the XDR-TB patient has already died.
- One of these WHO-studies, with the catchy title of "the
increasing global burden of tuberculosis linked to human immunodeficiency
virus " showed that by the year 2000, at least two-million so- called
"co-infected HIV-TB" patients had already been diagnosed in
South Africa alone, of whom some 178,540 patients had already died in
the previous two years.
-
- If the WHO experts who analysed these statistics were
correct, it also means that at least 2-million people must already have
died in South Africa of XDR-TB alone up to the year 2003, when this study
was undertaken. The SA epidemic shows that XDR-TB patients do not survive
this infection very long, -- hospitalised patients die of it within 14
to 20 days and it has a 100% mortality-rate. What makes the present epidemic
so worrisome however is that previously healthy people now are also being
identfied with XDR-TB in South Africa.
-
- This 2003 study may have been WHO's first worldwide research
on this subject -- in which they reviewed three-year-old medical data
from official notifications of TB cases, treatment outcomes, surveys
of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections, and the HIV prevalence in patients
with TB and other subgroups (such as hepatitis-and syphillis-infected
patients).
-
- This information was collated from published literature
and the databases held by the World Health Organization, the Joint United
Nations Programme on HIV/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (UNAIDS),
the US Census Bureau, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Result of the 2003 WHO study:
-
- It showed that by 2000, at least 226,000 coinfected TB-HIV
deaths had already occurred among the 1.8million registered TB deaths
worldwide.
-
- And the highest number (178,540 or 79%) of these co-infected
HIV-TB patients were diagnosed in 9 southern African countries -- with
South Africa at its epicentre.
- WHO also found more than 2-million co-infected TB-HIV
patients in South Africa from the Year 2000 data -- and these patients
must all have died since that time, because their bodies immune systems
would become progressively resistant to the six TB antibiotics then in
use in South Africa.
- How to locating those deadly, micron-sized TB particles
in the air... WHO also addressed another major problem in another study
a year later -- namely how find a quick, easy way to identify the micron-sized
TB-particles in the air. TB-bacteria have always been so dangerous because
they infect large groups of people very rapidly through the air.
-
- By 2004, studies at several scientific labs of universities
had developed a way to rapidly detect single-cells of the micron-sized
TB-bacteria in the air.It's not known whether these detectors now may
be in widespread use t -- they would be particularly useful for the airline
industry, which could measure passengers' breaths with it before they
board flights. This 'bioaerosol mass specrometer' would of course also
be very useful to prevent the spread of XDR-TB into the world community.
-
- The spectrometer is a rapid, stand-alone airborne TB
particle detector for closed environments. The study results were published
in the Applied Environmental Micriobiology magazine of October 2005.
The model was developed by the department of chemistry, Louisiana State
University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana as a portable, low cost, laser-guided
TB-aerosol particle detector which has since been patented by the John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd. company.
-
- http://www.wiley.com/legacy/wileychi/eac/cont7.html
- http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/109582272/
ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
- WHO 2003 study links:
-
- http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:16204525
- International Medicine May 2003, Page 163.burden of tuberculosis:
global trends and interactions with the HIV epidemic. [My paper] Elizabeth
L Corbett , Catherine J Watt , Neff Walker , Dermot Maher , Brian G Williams
, Mario C Raviglione , Christopher Dye
- http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:12742798
- ?
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