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"js" <me@nospamplease> wrote in message
> "don warner saklad" <don.saklad@gmail.com>
> It's getting bigger and bigger and each time you put a message on this board, the other
> side grows because to your message I add a link:
>
XDR TB Confirmed Spreading
Throughout S Africa
From Patricia Doyle, PhD
10-20-6
JOHANNESBURG -- Scientists' suspicions that the deadly new strain of extremely drug resistant
tuberculosis (XDR-TB) first identified in KwaZulu-Natal earlier in 2006 is circulating in all 9
provinces have been confirmed by the National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS), it emerged
yesterday, 17 Oct 2006. The disease has public health experts around the world deeply worried,
as it poses a severe risk to people infected with HIV.
XDR-TB first hit the headlines 2 months ago, when scientists told the 16th International AIDS
Conference in Toronto that a devastating outbreak of the disease in rural KwaZulu-Natal had
killed all but 1 of the 53 patients they had identified. All were HIV-positive.
Since then a total of 78 patients have been confirmed with XDR-TB in the province, 74 of whom
have died. Another 9 cases have been identified in Gauteng, 10 in North West, 6 in Eastern Cape
and 3 in Limpopo, according to health department director-general Thami Mseleku.
However, scientists were still in the dark as to what proportion of suspected TB patients were
infected with XDR-TB, the Medical Research Council's (MRC's) Karin Weyer told Business Day.
Speaking by telephone from the sidelines of a 2-day meeting on XDR-TB convened by the health
department, Weyer said the NHLS had analysed samples from suspected TB patients. Provinces were
about to begin detailed studies to determine the extent of the disease, she said.
Weyer said hospitals urgently needed to improve their infection-control measures to protect
staff and patients from contracting the disease within facilities. "Infection control in many
public hospitals is either inadequate or nonexistent," she said. A high proportion of the
XDR-TB cases studied in KwaZulu-Natal are believed to have arisen from in-hospital
transmission.
Yesterday's meeting included experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO), the MRC, and the
Southern African Development Community. It builds on an emergency meeting in Johannesburg in
September 2006, and the new WHO task group on XDR-TB's first meeting in Geneva last week.
A statement issued by the WHO task group yesterday described the emergence of XDR-TB as a
"serious threat to public health, particularly when associated with HIV".
http://allafrica.com/stories/200610180119.html
The combination of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis is a lethal one and similar circumstances occurred
in the USA with multiply-drug resistant TB in the 1980s in the USA, especially New York City.
The profoundly immunocompromised AIDS patient is much more likely to develop active TB after
exposure, and a nosocomial setting is a perfect venue to spread multiply resistant strains.
The high mortality rate of XDR-TB in HIV affected people reflects what occurs with untreated TB
in immunosuppressed individuals.
A map of South Africa with its provinces can be found at:
http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographi...e/southafr.pdf.
ProMED thanks Mary Marshall for this submission. - Mod.LL
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/
http://www.rense.com
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