People with tuberculosis are being sent to state hospitals for treatment because doctors in private practice are said to be unable to treat it. This is according to the CEO of the SA HIV Clinicians' Society, Lauren Jankelowitz.She said general practitioners often failed to diagnose TB and often did not know how to treat it.Nearly 500000 South Africans contract TB annually but almost 80% are cured, according to Health Department figures - yet TB is the most common cause of death in this country.Jankelowitz, speaking at a Competition Commission inquiry into private healthcare costs, said there was a misconception about whose responsibility it was to treat TB.She said it was unclear whether medical aids refunded state hospitals for the cost of treatment of their members."Many private doctors do not know how to treat TB," she said."The private health sector is well-resourced and should train doctors in TB care."The head of the Competition Commission inquiry, former chief justice Sandile Ngcobo expressed surprise at the practice of private patients being referred to state facilities for TB treatment."If we follow this logic, the system tends to perpetuate itself," he said.Jankelowitz said that part of the problem was that medical aids did not have to cover the cost of treating TB in full because it was not a "prescribed minimum benefit" condition, the treatment costs of which medical aid schemes must cover in full.TB is likely to become more common in the middle class because diabetics are three times more likely to contract it, research shows.HIV doctor Gail Ashford said private practitioners should not be judged too harshly."TB is notoriously difficult to diagnose, particularly in people with HIV, in whom TB occurs in places other than the lungs, such as the abdomen, lymph nodes and brain."Standard TB symptom screening, and testing of sputum, might miss such cases."Professor Anthony Harries, of The London School of Tropical Medicine, who was in South Africa last year, has warned that TB rates will skyrocket worldwide as diabetes becomes more common.An expert in diabetes and TB, he said diabetes would cause TB rates to spike in the first world as HIV had done in South Africa.South Africa has an estimated 2million diabetics...