South Africa’s tuberculosis (TB) cure rate will reach 85% over the next five years, the Department of Health vowed on Thursday.
Releasing the final version of its latest TB strategic plan, Director General of Health Thami Mseleku said the plan’s goals were guided by international targets.
”Over the next five years, we will improve our case detection rate to 70%, cure rate to 85% and treatment success rate to more than 85%,” he told a media briefing in Cape Town.
The department’s latest figures show that the cure rate in 2006 was 57,6%, and treatment completion — a vital factor in the fight against drug-resistant strains of TB — was 70,8%.
The cure rate was just less than 50% in 2001.
The World Health Organisation, in its international Stop TB Partnership, has set goals of reversing the incidence of TB by 2015, and curing 85% of new cases by the same date.
South Africa’s fight against TB has been complicated by its massive HIV infection rate. The number of TB cases rose from 224 000 in 2002 to 342 000 last year.
It is currently one of the four countries in the world — the others are China, Russia and India — with the largest concentration of TB sufferers with diagnosed drug-resistant strains of the disease.
Mseleku said that in addition to an extra R400-million set aside for the fight against TB in this month’s mini-budget, the department has asked for additional funds in next year’s main Budget.
He said though the department is committed to the fight against the disease, there is a general need for new TB diagnostics and drugs.
With the attention being given to ordinary TB, he believes South Africa will be able to avoid an exponential increase in the occurrence of multidrug-resistant TB.
He said the new plan acknowledges the close connection between TB and HIV/Aids, and provides ways of dealing with the challenges of co-infection.
According to the plan, one of its goals will be ”functional integration” of TB and HIV activities in health facilities.
”The focus will be to increase HIV testing uptake by TB patients, CD4 testing and assessment of all co-infected patients, provision of treatment and preventive therapy for other opportunistic infections and antiretroviral treatment for all co-infected patients,” it says.
The plan also aims, among others, to improve infection control and to ”empower people with TB as well as communities”. — Sapa