Treat TB like HIV, say activists

Tuberculosis is a national emergency, which the government needs to deal with urgently, say the activists that fought the government to provide treatment for HIV.

Treatment Action Campaign, Section 27, and Médecins Sans Frontières are calling for civil society, which forced the government in 2002 to give antiretrovirals to HIV positive pregnant women, to now turn their attention to TB.

They are using the TB conference, which kicks off in Durban today, to raise the plight of the thousands of people who die of drug-resistant TB every year, because there is no medicine that works to cure them.

They also suggest that government set up war rooms in every province to improve treatment of TB as more than half the people who are diagnosed with drug resistant TB in the government don’t even start treatment.

Drug-resistant TB is on the rise in South Africa and has a cure rate of less than 40%. South Africa has the third highest number of drug resistant TB patients in the world.  

"We have the policies and documents on how to treat TB, but what is missing is political will," said Section 27 Attorney John Stevens.

He said prisoners with TB are not being treated properly in prison, despite a 2012 Constitutional Court ruling that held the Department of Justice liable for a prisoner contracting TB in overcrowded Pollsmoor.

He said TB spreading in prisons affects all South Africans.

"The evidence we have shows prison is a breeding ground for drug-resistant TB."

A year ago, the government commited to rolling out GeneXpert testing machines that detect drug resistant TB in two hours to prisons.

"There are only machines in six prisons of the 240," complained Stevens.

Once diagnosed with an illness, he has heard of detainees, begging, bullying and bribing for HIV or TB medication. "I know a prisoner who has been HIV positive since 2005 and almost died last year, but was only put on treatment a few weeks ago."   TB prisoners also sturggle to get medication, he said.

He said many solutions to prevent the spread of TB in prison were simple such as opening windows, replacing doors with barred gates and giving prisoners more than an hour outside everyday.

Médecins Sans Frontières Doctor Jennifer Hughes who treats drug-resistant TB patients says many face stigma as it falsely believed they got the disease from not taking medicine.  Patients can contract the deadly resistant disease from sitting in a taxi or going to school.

One patient told her: "People still think you get drug-resistant TB because you are bad patient. They say you deserve to have drug-resistant TB. Everyone thinks I am bad person and that I have HIV. I  have never had TB before. I am HIV negative."

- For more news breaks from #TB2014, follow Katharine Child at https://twitter.com/katjanechild

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