- CAPE TOWN, South Africa --
More than 3.5-million people have aready succumbed to the combined onslaught
of Tuberculosis+Aids in his country since 2002, and some 6,5-million people
now are infected with the human-immune-deficiency virus (HIV) leading
inevitably to the deadly Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) --
now made so much worse by a new mutation with tuberculosis.
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- This past year, the South African health crisis moved
from its "chronic"stagel into a state of emergency after the
discovery of a second, even deadlier epidemic: a unique mutation of TB+the
AIDS virus was beginning to kill off hospital and clinic patients very
rapidly and is now spreading so fast that wihtin six months, it was identified
in every clinic and hospital in the country.
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- This new mutated strain combining TB+AIDS is airborne,
highly infectious and untreatable with any known medicine available in
South Africa today. There is no vaccine against it.
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- This airborne TB+AIDS infection is now spreading very
rapidly among the AIDS-infected population also because the Mbeki-regime
has a policy not to quarantine such suspected patients until their confirmation
is returned from the laboratories, usually six weeks later. Such patients
simply continue attending outpatient clinics where they mingle with many
other people and spread the disease rapidly.
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- This new TB+AIDS epidemic has a proven kill-rate of 98%
in South African patients -- and kills such patients within twenty days.
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- It has now been identified in clinics and hospitals all
over South Africa and has even spread to neighbouring Kenya and Lesotho
according to Medesins sans Frontieres.
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- The already AIDS-burdened SA health system is being overwhelmed
by this second, much deadlier epidemicand most TB-hospitals'isolation
wards now have become TB-hospices where doctors and nurses are waging
a desperate battle to find a cure for their deadly-ill patients.
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- One patient identified with 'multiple-drug-resistant'
TB+AIDS walked out of a SA TB hospital recently and returned home to
Lesotho - where he died at a Medisins sans Frontieres clinic where none
of the usual TB-medicines had any effect on him.
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- Meanwhile the SA laboratories, which for years have been
grossly underfunded and understaffed, often can only give confirmation
of the new strain within six weeks of being sent the sputum-test -- by
which time the patient has already died.
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- At least five SA nurses have already succumbed to the
new XDR-TB +AIDS epidemic in South Africa since October 2006 -- four at
a TB hospital in KwaZulu-Natal; and one nurse succumbed of it at the
Pollsmoor Prison Hospital, where an inmate was also hurriedly transferred
to a TB-hospital where he died of the XDR-TB+AIDS mutated-strain.
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- Yet amidst this overwhelming health-care crisis in South
Africa, the SA president -- known for his micro-managing of every department--
now has fired his pro-science deputy health minister - the only high-level
official who maintained a scientific approach to combating this new epidemic
and encouraged a programme for developing an AIDS-vaccine inside South
Africa.
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- Mrs Madlala-Routledge was fired because she had allegedly
taken an 'unauthorised trip' to Spain, for which she had not obtained
the 'prerequisite permission of the President ".
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- Ministers and deputy ministers need the president's approval
to travel outside the country.
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- It's being claimed that her submitted request for approval
had languished over a mix-up over the travel dates -- and that Meki had
only turned down her request for the trip once she and her party of three
-- including her AIDS-activist son -- had already arrived in Spain. The
'mixup over the dates' involved a mere day: she had left only one day
earlier than had been indicated on her request.
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- South Africa's deputy health-minister had been invited
by the International Aids Vaccine Initiative to address their seminar
on AIDS vaccines scheduled for June 12 to 15 2007 in Spain.
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- Through her office, South Africa has been giving its
cooperation in the the desperate, worldwide drive to find a vaccine for
AIDS. It is estimated that without a vaccine, at lest 50-million people
will die of AIDS-related diseases (including the new XDR-TB+AIDS strain
in South Africa) within the next ten years.
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- LINK: http://www.iavi.org/viewfile.cfm?fid=416
- Mbeki Fires Only Pro-Western Science Health Official
- This country's increasingly dictatorial president Thabo
Mbeki's decision to fire his only pro-Western-science top health official
-- his deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge -- was a "dreadful
error of judgement", the country's only independent Aids- activist
organisation 'Treatment Action Campaign' has warned.
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- Parliamentarian Mrs Patricia de Ville and other opposition
party MPs also sharply criticised Mbeki for firing the pro-Western- science-oriented
deputy health minister -- with De Lille claiming that the country's second-highest
health official had been 'set up to take the fall' . Mrs De Lille pointed
out that the deputy health-minister's 'was well-known er honesty'. Mrs
Madlala- Routledge's son Simon is a pro-AIDS-treatment activist and the
deputy health-minister herself has been very supportive in a campaign
to develop new AIDS vaccines, siding against Mbeki's unscientific views
towards the Hiv-AIDS epidemic.
- This country's increasingly dictatorial president Thabo
Mbeki's decision to fire his only pro-Western-science top health official
-- his deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge -- was a "dreadful
error of judgement", the country's only independent Aids- activist
organisation 'Treatment Action Campaign' has warned.
-
-
- Parliamentarian Mrs Patricia de Ville and other opposition
party MPs also sharply criticised Mbeki for firing the pro-Western- science-oriented
deputy health minister -- with De Lille claiming that the country's second-highest
health official had been 'set up to take the fall' . Mrs De Lille pointed
out that the deputy health-minister's 'was well-known er honesty'.Mrs
Madlala- Routledge's son Simon is a pro-AIDS-treatment activist and the
deputy health-minister herself has been very supportive in a campaign
to develop new AIDS vaccines, siding against Mbeki's unscientific views
towards the Hiv-AIDS epidemic.
- The fired deputy health minister now is expected to repay
the total costs for the trip which amounted to R161,000. (about $16,000).
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- LINK
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- http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/
Politics/ 0,,2-7-12_2161442,00.html?
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