South African health authorities went on high alert on Wednesday after officials confirmed a case of a new, deadly strain of tuberculosis (TB) in Johannesburg, the country’s economic hub.
Officials said the case, a woman, had refused to stay in hospital — stoking fears the TB strain could spread rapidly through communities already weakened by HIV/Aids.
”We are really treading carefully. We don’t want to create a scare,” Sybil Ngcobo, head of the Gauteng department of health, told a news conference.
Laboratory tests confirmed the case of a highly drug-resistant strain of TB on Friday but authorities only took action today [Wednesday] after a story in The Star, a local daily newspaper, reported that the disease had been detected in Johannesburg.
Ambulances and police cruisers were dispatched to the home of the woman, who had ignored doctor’s orders to stay put at Johannesburg’s Sizwe Hospital.
Officials said they plan to take court action if the woman refuses to go into isolation to prevent spread of the highly contagious airborne illness.
Authorities are asking family, friends, health workers and anyone else who may have come into contact with the affected woman — whom they not identified — to get tested.
The Johannesburg alert marks the first confirmed case of XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant tuberculosis) outside of the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, where it has been blamed for the deaths of about 60 people.
Doctors in KwaZulu-Natal said the TB threat continued to mount there.
”We are seeing two or three new cases each month,” said Dr Tony Moll, who detected the first case at a Durban hospital. ”We know it’s everywhere.”
Revised figures show KwaZulu-Natal saw a total of 63 people diagnosed with the extremely virulent form of TB, Moll said. Of the 60 who died almost all tested for HIV were positive.
Tuberculosis is especially dangerous for those with immune systems sapped by HIV, the virus that causes Aids. South Africa has one of the highest caseloads of HIV in the world, with an estimated five million of the country’s 45-million people infected.
The only other documented outbreak of the deadly strain in South Africa was several years ago when six people died in the central Gauteng province and were later found to be carriers of XDR-TB.
Medical experts have said South Africa must quickly stamp out the TB virus, although it remained unclear when or if effective antibiotic treatments might be widely available. — Reuters