More than 40,000 prisoners screened for MDR-TB
About eight percent of all MDR-TB tests conducted among prisoners tested positive for the form of TB, which is resistant to both of the most commonly used anti-TB drugs, according to information presented to the National Task Team for TB and HIV Services in Correctional Centres.
New data represents a 20-fold increase in the number of inmates tested for MDR-TB since 2011, when the country began introducing rapid TB testing via GeneXpert machines. These machines are capable of returning TB test results in just hours in contrast to convention testing that can takes days.
At least seven of these machines are now located in prisons, according to data released last year by the National Health Laboratory Services at the SA TB Conference in Durban. This follows the introduction of the machines into Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison by the Department of Health two years ago today on World TB Day.
In 2011, former Pollsmoor inmate Dudley Lee, took the Department of Correctional Services to court, arguing that the conditions he was forced to live in for almost five years as an awaiting-trial prisoner caused him to develop active TB. Although Lee eventually died, his court case was successful and was credited with revealing the extent of the TB epidemic in the country’s prisons.
However, recent task team information also shows continued challenges in addressing TB among prisoners with a lack of access to chest x-rays needed to help diagnose TB of the lungs.
Nationally, the GeneXpert roll out has led to an 85 percent increase in the number of MDR-TB cases diagnosed, according to Clinical Advisor for TB for the non-profit Right to Care Dr Francesca Conradie.
“We are seeing an increase from 5400 to 6700 (cases diagnosed a year) to over 10,000 in three years,” said Conradie, who added that many doctors are able to more confidently diagnose the condition, which requires about two years of treatment. – Health-e News.
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
More than 40,000 prisoners screened for MDR-TB
by ayandamkhwanazi, Health-e News
March 24, 2015
Related
Millions go hungry, accountability and public participation needed
One in four people go hungry in South Africa every day, and the public needs to ensure that their right to access to food enshrined in the Constitution is realised.
World wastes almost half of all food produced
About 40 percent of the food produced globally is wasted while 795 million people go hungry, according to new research released yesterday (16 July)
NHI: School health teams take screenings to rural children
For the country’s rural children, the revitalisation of school health services could be a lifeline – if doctors and specialists answer the call.