Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - November 13, 2007
Anton Ferreira
THE surge in the number of infections caused by the deadly, mutant form of tuberculosis is the legacy of mistakes in fighting the disease over the decades.
That's the verdict of Nils Billo, head of the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, who said yesterday that South Africa's TB programme lagged those of some of the less well-off countries in Africa.
He was speaking in Cape Town at the end of a five-day conference on lung diseases at which it was revealed that South Africa had 6716 cases of multi-drug resistant TB and 481 cases of extensively drug resistant TB last year. There are no antibiotics to fight extensively drug resistant TB.
Billo said: "If you have a lot of multi- and extensively drug resistant TB, there's something wrong with the system. Probably, in the past 20 years, mistakes have been made, as in many countries."
Another lung disease expert, Don Enarson, from Canada, said: "If you go to any hospital in South Africa y ou have to pass a long line of patients who sit there for hours on end - and they're coughing. If you mix people with HIV with TB patients, you have a problem."
Billo criticised the developed world for not doing enough to develop new ways of fighting TB .
He said: "The pharmaceutical industry does not see a big profit in developing a TB drug. Much more money should be spent on developing new tools."
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