- BuaNews (Tshwane)
- 10-14-6
-
- The Department of Health will hold a two-day meeting
with the Word Health Organisation (WHO) next week, to discuss ways to fight
tuberculosis in the country.
-
- The meeting will be held in Johannesburg on Tuesday and
Wednesday, to discuss the multi-drug resistant (MDR) and the extremely-drug
resistant (XDR) tuberculosis.
-
- Departmental spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said the meeting
had been requested by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang for the
WHO experts to assist in reviewing national and regional strategies and
action plans to deal with XDR-TB.
-
- The disease has been discovered in several provinces
in the country, including KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Free State, with the
Northern Cape and North West the latest to confirm its existence over the
past few days.
-
- The multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, which does not
respond to at least three of the second-line TB treatment drugs; was first
diagnosed in KwaZulu-Natal a couple of months ago, where a reported 70
people have died since.
-
- "The Department has invited the WHO, SADC Ministers
of Health and their TB experts, heads of SA Departments of Health, their
TB programme managers and communication officers from all nine provinces,"
said Mr Mngadi.
-
- Also to attend are scientists from the Medical Research
Council (MRC) and the National Health Laboratories Services (NHLS) and
representatives of the mining sector, the pharmaceutical industry and various
universities.
-
- "The objective of the meeting is to obtain a briefing
on the status quo with regard to the management and prevention of TB, MDR
and XDR TB. The meeting will also come up with an MDR and XDR TB strategy,
which will talk to all the countries-specific TB programmes," said
Mr Mngadi.
-
- He added that this was a follow-up to the meeting between
Dr Tshabalala-Msimang and TB experts, clinicians and laboratory scientists
in Johannesburg last month, about the nature and extent of the problem
in the country.
-
- The experts recommended that the country urgently needed
to strengthen its TB control programme, surveillance and infection control
systems, among other things.
-
- Given the mobility of people in Southern Africa, the
Minister also met with the SADC Ministers of Health in Mozambique Maputo
also last month, to brief them about the situation in South Africa.
-
- "The Ministers agreed that the XDR TB challenge
needed a regional approach, taking into consideration that TB is a challenge
in SADC counties and the free movement of people within the region and
continent," Mr Mngadi said.
-
- The MRC has also developed a seven point plan to combat
the disease.
-
- The emergency action plan calls for urgent and rapid
surveys of this type of the disease, enhancing capacity at laboratories,
promoting universal access to antiretrovirals (ARVs) under joint TB and
HIV activities and increasing research support for rapid diagnostic test
development.
-
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- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
-
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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