Bacterial diseases

Nearly 50 000 people in the Western Cape are receiving treatment at provincial health facilities for tuberculosis. Of these, 450 people are being treated for the multidrug-resistant (MDR) strain and 55 for extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB, says Health MEC Marius Fransman.

While squabbling over human rights and other issues of HIV, South Africa has allowed the tuberculosis epidemic to spread out of control.

People in low-resource countries who are ill with multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) will get a faster diagnosis in two days, not the standard two to three months and appropriate treatment thanks to two new initiatives unveiled today by WHO, the Stop TB Partnership, UNITAID and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND).

TB is South Africa's leading natural cause of death. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang opened South Africa's first national tuberculosis (TB) conference this week with some welcome good news: her department is to acquire technology that will reduce the time it takes to diagnose drug-resistant TB from as long as four months to less than a week.

A month after Health Minister Dr Richard Kamwi officially announced the presence of the deadly extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) in Namibia, the country has yet to start treating the first eight cases.

Health authorities in KwaZulu-Natal have put in place precautionary measures after a suspected cholera outbreak on the south coast.

Health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang this week presented what may be her final budget as head of the health portfolio. She used the opportunity to mainly present successes by her department. The minister also used the occasion to claim victory in the battle against AIDS declaring that the 2007 HIV antenatal survey has shown a 1,2% drop in HIV prevalence among pregnant women.

The rising tide of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa may finally be brought under control after a public-sector laboratory demonstrated it can routinely diagnose such forms of the disease within hours instead of weeks. The performance by the Greenpoint laboratory of the National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS) could revolutionise diagnosis of multidrug- and extensively drug-resistant TB.

South Africa has by far the worst TB prevalence rate in the world, with almost 1000 South Africans out of every 100 000 living with the disease in 2006. This is according to the Global TB report released in Geneva on Monday 16th March, based mainly on 2006 statistics supplied to the World Health Organisation by over 200 countries.

Africa will not achieve the United Nations-set sixth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halting and reversing the incidence of tuberculosis (TB) by 2015. Speaking at the SA Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative symposium in Cape Town, Dr. Marcos Espinal, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership, described TB as a human disgrace that has been in place for thousands of years.