Treatment decentralisation needs an injection
Decentralised drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) treatment to clinics is being rolled out across the country. Or is it? NSP Review visited a number of Eastern Cape clinics and interviewed patients and…
Fighting TB: Rural challenges, hopes and dreams
Every time I diagnose a child with TB, I wonder how far we are from winning this fight against the disease. Considering that the effort put into preventing mother-to-child transmission…
Tackling infection control
[caption id="attachment_2694" align="alignnone" width="780"] School children join in World TB Day activities in 2014 reminding society that anybody can get TB and everybody needs support. (Photo by Dalene von Delft)[/caption]…
Dying for better treatment
There was recently a small celebration in one of the primary care clinics in Khayelitsha. One more person was officially declared cured after more than two years of treatment for…
Sticking to treatment
Adherence to DR-TB therapy is essential for treatment to be successful. Poor adherence may result in unsuccessful treatment outcomes, and the infection of other household and community members. In addition,…
The numbers are uncertain
South Africa is one of the few high burden countries where DR-TB case detection is reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be more than 100%. Based on a…
Why we must decentralise
While South Africa has improved case detection for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) with the introduction of the Xpert TB test, the capacity to treat patients diagnosed with Rifampicin-resistant TB has not…
Health department’s plan
South Africa has the third highest burden of TB in the world after China and India – approximately 1% of the South African population gets active tuberculosis every year. While…
Drug-resistant TB Facts
ABOUT TB TB is second only to HIV/AIDS as the greatest killer worldwide due to a single infectious agent. In 2012, 8.6 million people fell ill with TB and 1.3…
Time to tackle DR-TB
“The greatest infectious killer in human history is making a comeback, morphing into new drug resistant forms. While it is largely forgotten in wealthy nations, millions of people a year…