Share & more
South Africa's department of health says there is no need for alarm over reports of a new strain of tuberculosis (TB) in its east-coast province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Earlier this year, Medical Research Council (MRC) experts stressed that the presence of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) in the province, which has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the country, was cause for concern.
According to the MRC's Karin Weyer, 52 of the 53 patients who contracted XDR-TB and died were HIV-positive.
However, the provincial health department's general manager of communication, Leon Mbangwa, told the South African Broadcasting Corporation that although XDR-TB did exist in the province, it was treatable if detected early enough.
Specialists in communicable diseases will gather in Johannesburg this week for a conference on the topic, amid fears that the escalating costs of treating TB would add to the burden of already overstretched national public health budgets.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions