Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Cure rate of TB abysmal, admits Minister

Control of tuberculosis in South Africa is among the worst in the world, with infections tripling over the past decade.

“South Africa is among the 10 worst-performing countries on TB control,” Deputy Health Minister Molefi Sefularo said on Monday at the sixth annual investigators’ meeting of Aids and TB specialists in Cape Town.

The meeting was held to outline SA’s progress on TB control. Researchers from South Africa, Zambia, Zim-babwe, Kenya, Brazil, the US and the World Health Organisation (WHO) attended.

A Statistics SA report of a few months ago indicated that in 2006 TB accounted for 13% of deaths, making it the number one cause of death in the country.

The WHO estimated that almost 1% (461 000) of South Africans developed TB annually.

The TB cure rate in SA is at 65%, whereas the WHO recommends an 85% cure rate to disrupt high levels of infection

Sefularo announced that the department was in the process of reviewing the country’s TB programme and hoped a plan would be presented to a consultative meeting by April 2010.

- The Citizen

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