Tests showing gold miners contracted a highly drug resistant strain of tuberculosis may not be correct, officials said on Thursday.
A statement by the Gauteng health department that XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant tuberculosis) had been identified in six gold miners in the Free State, sparked panic there.
But officials said further tests were being undertaken because several of the patients were responding to treatment.
"The confounding thing is these guys have XDR, but they're responding to conventional treatment, which is bizarre and suggests that maybe it's not XDR," said spokesperson Willie Jacobsz at Gold Fields.
| 'We're possibly dealing here with a false positive' |
So far XDR-TB has been largely confined to KwaZulu-Natal, where 60 people have died, with only one case reported in Johannesburg earlier this month.
Multi-drug resistant (MDR) and XDR strains have emerged largely because patients fail to take drugs properly, allowing the disease to build up defences.
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"We need to re-look again at those results … we're possibly dealing here with a false positive," said Dr Donald Chapman, acting head of the provincial health department.
Even the XDR patients in the Free State who were not progressing as well did not appear to have the super virulent strain that emerged in KwaZulu-Natal, which caused rapid deterioration and death within a week or two.
"In our case the scenario does not seem to be that of the KZN, ours is a very slow progressing strain… The message we're trying to get to the public is that this is definitely not the very dangerous strain," Chapman added.
Doctors have voiced fears that a major outbreak of the deadly TB strain could sharply hike South Africa's already heavy Aids death toll.
Jacobsz said media reports that the super virulent strain, dubbed "killer TB", had spread to the key mining region of the Free State caused panic. "On Thursday, there was absolute mayhem in the Free State," he said. - Reuters
- This article was originally published on page 4 of Cape Times on September 22, 2006
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