In 2019 around 360 000 people in South Africa fell ill with tuberculosis (TB) and about 58 000 people died due to the disease, according to a World Health Organization Report released last week.
21 Oct 2020
A World Health Organization (WHO) report published last week showed more people are falling ill with tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa than previously thought – but also that the country’s treatment success rate for dangerous drug-resistant forms of the disease have improved.
The WHO report shows that TB deaths could increase if diagnosis and treatment are disrupted for three consecutive months. The Covid-19 pandemic has forced governments to divert resources away from TB.
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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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.
