Aly Verbaan and Siyavuya Mzantsi
AS countries across the globe observe World TB Day today to raise awareness about the disease, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said while the progress made to contain its spread did not inspire similar confidence, not all was doom and gloom.
Tutu was speaking at the screening of the film Breathe Umphefumlo at Stellenbosch University last night. The film is a modern adaptation of the opera La Bohème, in which the main character dies of TB.
“South Africa is said to have the third highest number of TB cases in the world, at just under half a million, 60 percent of whom are co-infected with HIV.
“Ranked second to HIV as the greatest killer worldwide, TB claimed 1.5 million lives in 2013. More than 95 percent of these deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries,” he said
“Each one of them was a person of flesh and blood; somebody’s sister, son or father, somebody’s grandmother. It’s not all doom and gloom. According to the WHO, the number of people infected with TB annually is declining, albeit slowly, and the TB death rate dropped by 45 percent between 1990 and 2013.
According to the SA National Tuberculosis Association’s Derick Esterhuizen, two problems impeded TB recovery. The first is that when patients are put on a six-month treatment, as soon as the symptoms disappear, they stop treatment, resulting in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, which can cause transmission to others.
Esterhuizen said the other problem was that many TB sufferers were alcoholics or drug addicts, and avoid medication as the combination makes them feel very ill.
Of all areas in the country, Cape Town carries the heaviest burden and intensive work is being carried out to eradicate it completely.
To raise awareness for World TB Day today, 5 000 Treatment Action Campaign members plan to march to Parliament to ask MPs to show their solidarity by getting tested. The march leaves from Keizersgracht at 10am.