Extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) has been found across South Africa, the Medical Research Council (MRC) said on Tuesday.
”The national health laboratory services have analysed the laboratory data for the past 18 months and have shown that these cases are present in every province,” the MRC’s Dr Karin Weyer told the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
She said the extent of the spread of XDR-TB was not known as the laboratory data was biased.
The cases were first identified in KwaZulu-Natal. The SABC reported that KwaZulu-Natal remained the worst-affected province, with 270 cases reported so far.
Weyer was speaking after a workshop on TB in Pretoria attended by World Health Organisation (WHO) officials and delegates from the Southern African Development Community.
Earlier, health department director-general Thami Mseleku said that without special efforts to test multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) patients for resistance to other drugs, the government would be unaware of the presence of XDR-TB among TB patients.
Mseleku said the government had made diagnosis and treatment accessible to all communities and provided these services free, but ”despite all these efforts, government is not winning the battle”.
Mario Raviglione of the WHO highlighted the challenges of the Global Plan, an initiative of the WHO, to stop TB. He said communities were unaware and uninvolved, and that the connection between TB and HIV was not clearly known.
”To eradicate XDR-TB may take a number of years because it’s not a pandemic, it comes and goes,” Raviglione said.
Raviglione said the set goals of trying to curb TB included engaging all care providers, enabling and promoting research and addressing the relationship between TB and HIV/Aids.
Medical officer Ernesto Jaramillio, also part of WHO, said diagnostic capacity in XDR-TB was only present in few countries.
”Evidence indicates that a strong TB control programme can make a fundamental contribution to preventing and controlling MDR-TB and XDR-TB,” Jaramillio said.
Official statistics show an increase in the number of TB cases detected in South Africa over the years, with a low cure rate of 50% and a high ”defaulter rate” of 10%.
These rates have resulted in a high proportion of MDR-TB patients.
Mseleku said lack of investment into research for TB drugs and new diagnostic tests had contributed to the country’s poor TB position.
”We urge pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies to correct this gap with respect to new TB drugs and new diagnostic tests.”
He said the government needed to revise strategies to ensure early detection of resistant strains, and to have a surveillance system in place to monitor the resistance patterns.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang could not attend the workshop because she was ill. – Sapa