Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize says as the country battles the coronavirus pandemic the healthcare system should not lag behind in addressing other diseases such as TB and HIV.
The Stop TB Partnership’s Global Drug Facility (GDF) today announced the addition of child-friendly bedaquiline 20mg tablets to the GDF Pediatric DR-TB Initiative. The US FDA approval of the medicine, on 27 May 2020, marks a new milestone for all-oral DR-TB regimens in children who are older than 5 years of age and weighing more than 15 kilograms. These children will now benefit from the same optimized treatments being provided to their parents – no more injections for anyone.
The Stop TB Partnership today announced that its Global Drug Facility (GDF) will distribute 100,000 Xpert® Xpress SARS-CoV-2 tests donated by Cepheid towards the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Xpert® Xpress SARSCoV-2 is a rapid molecular diagnostic test for the qualitative detection of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19. The test has been designed to operate on any of the more than 23,000 GeneXpert® Systems worldwide, with a detection time of approximately 45 minutes.
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From taxi driver to professional nurse and TB project leader
As South Africa nears day 55 of its COVID-19 lockdown, a new modelling study by the Stop TB Partnership suggests that the longer countries spend under lockdown, the more tuberculosis (TB) cases and deaths the world could see.
Three products have recently been made available to support TB programmes’ efforts to reach UN TB targets to detect and treat 40 million people with TB by 2022, including 3.5 million children, as well as 1.5 million people with drug-resistant TB. All three tests offer opportunities for multiplexing, with menus of tests for other diseases available, including COVID-19 tests.
The COVID-19 level 5 restrictions has resulted in a ~ 48% average weekly decrease in TB Xpert testing volumes while, the number of TB positive declined by 33%. The relative difference resulted in a higher weekly positivity rate during the lockdown period. These unintended consequences will have a negative impact on efforts to control TB which remains the leading infectious disease cause of death in South Africa currently.
07 May 2020
FAST FACTS
COVID-19 is a new virus which has spread quickly to many countries around the world including in Southern Africa.
Knowing the facts about COVID-19 symptoms, how the virus spreads and what you can do to stop it will help protect you and your community.
There is a lot of misinformation about COVID-19 so it’s important to check information has come from a reliable source such as the World Health Organization or your government health authority.
With nations around the world confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact that tuberculosis remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease – killing between 1-1.5 million people globally every year – must be highlighted.
