Foreign assistance for TB programme

The South African-based Centre for Quality Assurance of Medicines (CENQAM) at Potchefstroom University has received assistance from international organisations to improve tuberculosis treatment, PANA reported on Thursday. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the WHO have been working with the CENQAM to combat infectious disease, the report said. “Prevention of transmission is perhaps more dependent on drug therapy than any other public health problem, yet the quality of drugs prior to patient consumption is rarely assured in most parts of the world,” Banie Boneschans of the CENQAM said. In 1999 the estimated incidence of TB in South Africa was 495 cases per 100,000 people and was rated as one of the highest on the continent, Boneschans indicated. According to the report, drug quality assurance was poorest where the disease burden attributable to TB was highest and this had potential implications for the achievement of high cure rates and the containment of drug-resistant TB worldwide.