Port Alfred TB records concerning
Town a hotspot for patients discontinuing vital treatment
Port Alfred has been identified as one of the hotspots in the province with the highest number of tuberculosis patients who have stopped taking their treatment.
This is because many seasonal workers who receive TB treatment while in Port Alfred, stop taking it when they leave the town.
That was one of the alarms sounded during a visit to the town by health MEC Nomakhosazana Meth recently.
Meth spoke at Titi Jonas Hall in Port Alfred on Friday March 26, during the province’s annual commemoration of World Tuberculosis (TB) Day.
World TB Day is held to raise awareness and step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic.
The aim of the official provincial event was to raise public awareness about tuberculosis.
“The national theme for this year is ‘Yes, you and I can end TB’,” Meth said.
In the build-up to the day’s commemoration, the province conducted a massive screening campaign, Meth said.
During the four weeks from February 24 to March 24, 28,326 people in the Eastern Cape were screened for TB.
Of those, 9,911 were children under five years old, Meth said.
“Through this campaign, we managed to track and trace 401 people who had stopped taking their TB treatment,” Meth said.
Headlining that dangerous trend was Port Alfred: one of the reasons the department of health decided to hold its TB commemoration in the coastal town.
The MEC’s spokesperson, Mkhululi Ndamase, later said: “Port Alfred has been detected to have one of the highest numbers of people who have stopped taking their TB treatment.”
The figures were high due to the seasonal nature of much of the employment in the area.
“Seasonal or contract workers who discover they have contracted the [bacterium] start their medication at a local health facility. But when they move on to another contract in another town, they don’t complete their full course of TB medication,” Ndamase said.
Talk of the Town asked how many Port Alfred TB patients had stopped taking their medication but had not received a response by the time of publishing.
Meth said: “A lot of times we have noticed people tend to stop taking treatment when they start to feel better and that is wrong.”
Skipping or missing doses can make TB drug-resistant.
Drug-resistant TB is hard to treat and can take up to two years to cure.
In 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) regarded SA as one
of the six countries to reach the “End TB Strategy” targets, because it reduced the incidence of new TB cases by 20% between 2015 and 2020.
Two years later, in 2022, the WHO released a report showing a reduction in the number of TB cases per 100,000 people in SA.
In 2015, there had been 998 cases of TB per 100,000 people, Meth said.
In 2022, that number dropped to 468 people per 100,000.
“This goes to show the amount of hard work we have put into fighting tuberculosis,” Meth said.
The MEC said several targeted interventions would include home-based
visits, which would include:
Screening and testing for TB, HIV, pregnancy, and NCD;
Conducting TB, STI and HIV contact tracing;
Educating communities about TB health checks, including self-screening; Tracking and tracing (HIV, TB, NCD); Identifying and referring pregnant women to the nearest facility to reduce maternal complications;
Identifying children under five who are malnourished and who missed their Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) appointments;
Educating caregivers on infant and young child feeding to reduce
malnutrition-related conditions. “The main remaining milestone in our resolve to provide free good quality healthcare service to our people is the implementation of the [National Health Insurance],” Meth said.