- Two 'XDR-TB hospices' now dedicated for isolating
XDR-TB patients in South Africa - death toll: more than 1,000 since October
2006; diagnosis rate of XDR-TB in SA: 1,054 per 100,000 of the population...
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- CAPE TOWN South Africa --
An unnamed 18-year-old South African youth has died at at HOME of diagnosed
extreme drug resistant tuberculosis -- the fifth death this month
in the Western Cape province alone from this deadly strain of TB, it was
reported by the Cape Argus today. The (TB-dedicated) Brooklyn Chest
Hospital 's 22-bed isolation ward has now remained full for months with
XDR-TB patients, with 'ordinary TB' patients hastily being transferred
to other TB-hospitals to create more new isolation wards. This TB-hospital
has thus become the country's second "XDR-TB hospice" in
the country...
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- The Western Cape has an officially-diagnosed total
of thirty-seven XDR-TB patients thus far - five of whom have already
died. It's not known whether the unnamed dead youth's contacts who
were nursing him at home have been tested for XDR-TB yet or require
isolation themselves - the South African news media fails to report these
important details.
- KwaZulu-Natal province has at least 1,000 diagnosed XDR-TB
patients, identified since October 2006, and the death rate in this province
is 100% thus far.
-
- The South African health department has meanwhile, also
not provided any updated death-rates for the XDR-TB epidemic since the
first week of April 2007, when they announced that 1,054 out of every 100,000
population-group were being diagnosed with it now and that the epidemic
had escaped from a TB-hospital in Pongola, Kwazulu-Natal into the greater
community -- and was now found in all the SA provinces.
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- The SA strain of XDR-TB is particularly virulent: it
is proving to be resistant to all the available drugs which the health
sector there can afford, especially when it reaches its most severe
form. The South African epidemic has patients dying of it within 20 days.
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- It was announced shortly before the outbreak that the
entire 700-bed Brooklyn Chest Hospital had just been designated
by the provincial parliamentarian Pierre Uys as a dedicated centre
for the treatment of multiple-drug-resistant patients.
-
- Now it looks as if this hospital is becoming South Africa's
second isolation-hospice dedicated solely to the care of dying XDR-TB
patients. The first dedicated XDR-hospice in South Africa is the old
mission hospital where it was first identified in October 2007.
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- http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=79
- &art_id=vn20070530113820436C553281
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- The global map of XDR-TB by the World Health Organisation -
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- updated on May 1 2007, shows that South Africa has
the highest number of infections worldwide:
- http://www.who.int/tb/xdr/xdrmap_1may_en.pdf
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- Health advisory on US passenger to Europe with XDR-TB:
30 May 2007:
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- http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2006/WHO_HTM_TB_2006.363_eng.pdf
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