Thousands of TB deaths unacceptable
IF YOU were to ask Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi what keeps him awake at night, he would probably say TB, the first day of the 8th SA Aids Conference heard yesterday.
And, that is because the incidence of TB in South Africa is among the highest in the world, guest speaker Dr Erasmus Morah, the South African director of the UN programme on HIV/Aids told delegates at the Durban ICC.
According to the World Health Organisation, South Africa is experiencing one of the world’s worst TB epidemics – and the problem is exacerbated by HIV.
The risk of developing active TB is much higher among people with a weakened immune system (HIV, malnutrition and the very young).
“Among the high-burden countries, South Africa has the third-highest absolute number of reported incident cases and the fifth-highest number of estimated prevalent (undiagnosed active TB) cases with about 1% of the population developing TB every year,” said a statement by Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical com- pany spearheading the awareness campaign.
Statistics South Africa reports that TB killed 33 000 people in 2015. Now Sanofi’s awareness campaign is to go into the townships, prisons, schools, hostels, taxi ranks, informal settlements and clinics to spread a “back to basics” message about TB.
“It is unacceptable that people are dying from TB when medication is available for free,” said Neo Molusi, Sanofi’s product manager.
The company has come up with a 16-page educational comic book and a character called “Themba” – a miner who has TB and who heeds the advice of the nurse at his clinic to take his medication every day for six months and stay healthy so that he will be cured.
But Themba’s fellow worker, John, fails to take his medication regularly, forgets to go for check-ups, and dies.
One of the main problems with some TB patients, the campaign launch was told yesterday, was that, after taking medication for a while, patients started to feel better and then stopped taking medication without being cured.