South Africa gets a new TB plan

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By Ilhaam Hoosain
09 November 2007

The Health Department welcomes the hosting of the 38th Union Conference on Lung Health in South Africa.

“We believe that this is an important conference that will once again highlight the need to intensify interventions against various lung diseases affecting our nation and the world,” says the department Director General Thami Mseleku.

Progress has been made in the development of the new Tuberculosis National Strategic Plan for 2007-2011 according to Mseleku.

The plans objective is to strengthen South Africa’s response to the challenges of TB, MDR TB and XDR TB.

One requirement of this plan is that all TB patients be offered voluntary HIV counselling and testing.

The number of TB cases remains high but there has been improvement in successful treatment completion and cure rates according to government.

Comments

AdrianaStuijt said…
I am amazed at your uncritical publication of this claim by the SA government that they have TB under control. That's spindoctoring of the worst kind. For instance the government STILL does not routinely test ALL the contacts of any newly identified TB-patient to stop the infection from spreading; and their claim that they need a court order every time they want to isolate an XDR-TB patient is a patent lie: there already is a law in which medical personnel actually is REQUIRED to isolate such highly infectious patients for the public good; which always takes precedence over the individual rights of the patient. XDR-TB was allowed to escape into the larger SA community because of this gross negligence of the SA health department. Their announcement of a R400-m boost to the health budget to help fight this new twin-epidemic, AIDS+TB, is so little money to combat this epidemic with, that it would have been better if Tokyo Sexwale had sold his wife's luxury jet instead to donate to the cause...
Friday, 09 November, 2007
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