- Source: SABC-TV, South Africa
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- View the video of this SABC-TB broadcast:
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- http://www.sabcnews.com/video_ram/0,1573,45872,00.ram
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- South Africa's national department of health (DOH)
has finally broken its two-month-long silence about the widening XDR-TB
epidemic in that country. On June 23 DOH director general Thabi Mseleku
was quoted on the government-run SABC-TV station as expressing her "
concern that the ongoing public sector strike could worsen the country's
TB problem."
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- "With cases of the deadly extreme-drug resistant
tuberculosis (XDR) strain of TB increasing", she was concerned that
TB patients who cannot access services '" run the risk of building
up a resistant to treatment, " the woman said.
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- She cited the latest available DOH statistics for ordinary
TB -- which date back to 2005 -- which show that TB already was the
leading cause of 'natural' death by that year.
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- The problem has now been exacerbated by the development
of the deadly XDR and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR) TB strains,
she said. The high incidence of TB infections are directly linked to the
high HIV infection rate in South Africa, where more than 3,5-million people
are co-infected with TB+HiV. Local doctors call the two diseases "the
terrible twins" tuberculosis greatly speeds the death of people
with AIDS.
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- Mseleku warned: "If you stop the (TB+HIV) treatment,
then you are creating more problems and complications, not only for the
country but for the people because they now going to develop a resistance."
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- The TB+HIV co-infected patients at Khayelitsha clinic
must get a daily cocktail of up to 13 drugs a day which all have to be
given to them by registered health workers to force compliance. Any lapse
of their drugs-regimen usually leads to death from Extremely-Drug-Resistance
Tuberculosis. This method is referred to as the DOT -treatmentand
is very effective in such communities. The Cape Town health department's
ordinary-TB cure-rate was 76% int he last quarter of 2006 with the DOT-system
-- in which trained doctors, nurses and community health workers are the
absolute keys to suppressing the outbreak.
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- One in three mothers in Khayelitsha, (pop.500,000) infected
with Aids virus:
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- The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Doctors without
borders which run the TB+HIV co-infection treatment clinics in Khayelitsha
near Cape Town (population 500,000) also are hugely worried about the fact
that medicating their patients has now been interrupted for far too long
by the three-week public servants' strike. This forthcoming Tuesday the
Cape High Court will rule on the TAC's application to have 41 dismissed
Khayelitsha health workers reinstated. The need to get them back is great:
one in three mothers-to-be in Khayelitsha tests HIV-positive and at least
60% are also co-infected with Tuberculosis.
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- LINK:
- http://www.sabcnews.com:80/south_africa/health/0,2172,151389,00.html
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