Health Ministry receives anti-TB drugs

Central African Republic's Ministry of Health has received tuberculosis drugs worth 15 million francs CFA (about US $25,000) from Lions Club International, state-owned Radio Centrafrique reported on Friday. Receiving the consignment of 160 kg of rifampicin, donated by the French chapter of Lions Club, on Friday Health Minister Nestor Nali said it would enable continued care of patients until further supplies were received from the World Health Organisation and the Global Drug Facility, a four-drug fixed-dose combination tablet recommended by the WHO for treatment. "Health facilities would most certainly have been out of TB drugs in three to four months," he said. He said the disease was on the rise, and was now affecting from 100 to 150 out of 100,000 people. The disease had been difficult to contain, he said, because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and political instability in the country over the last seven years. In a 1997 report, which is still valid, the government's anti-TB programme said 50 percent of HIV patients suffered from the disease. Another 20 percent of patients complaining of coughing have been diagnosed with TB, the second biggest killer in the country after malaria. Meanwhile, several cases of sleeping sickness have been detected in the southwestern province of Lobaye, prompting the ministry to appeal for aid. The coordinator of the government body in charge of sleeping sickness control, Dr. Sylvestre Mbadingai, told IRIN on Saturday that 54 of 2,992 suspected cases recorded from 6-15 September had tested positive. Another 48 were under observation, he said. He said that the province had been a sleeping sickness endemic zone from 1918 to 1947, and that its closeness to two other active endemic zones - in northwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and northern Republic of Congo (ROC) - had led to the reappearance of the disease in 2003. The most recent case that attracted the attention of the health authorities was in August, when a staff member of a timber firm contracted the disease. Mbadingai said villagers frequently went to hunt and fish in the ROC border village of Enyelle, which is a sleeping sickness zone. This resurgence of the disease prompted Nali to appeal to the international community for money to attack the disease and to impregnate tsetse fly traps. "The funds are urgently needed to enable us to carry out tests in all the villages in Lobaye Province and map out the disease," he said. He also said tests needed to be carried out urgently in the CAR, the DRC and ROC. Sleeping sickness, known scientifically as trypanosomiasis, is caused by protozoan parasites and transmitted to humans through the bite of the tsetse fly. There are two of these parasites one of which, the trypanosoma brucei gambiense, affects western and central Africa, the WHO says. When a person is infected, the parasite multiplies in the blood and lymph glands and eventually invades the central nervous system where, WHO says, "it provokes major neurological disorders". WHO says sleeping sickness is a "daily threat" to at least 60 million Africans in 36 sub-Saharan states. Entirely surrounded by endemic zones, the CAR had until August three endemic areas: Nola in eastern Haute Sangha Province bordering Cameroon; Batangafo, in the northern province of Ouham bordering Chad; and the southeastern province of Haut Mbomou bordering the DRC and Sudan. Chad, Cameroon, DRC, the ROC and Sudan are all endemic zones, Mbadingai said. He warned of the risks of having the new endemic area only about 100 km from the CAR capital, Bangui.