TB fight a litmus test for health

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi

Published Nov 30, 2015

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Lisa Isaacs

SOUTH AFRICA aims to diagnose and treat at least 90 percent of all people with TB and ensure the same percentage successfully complete treatment by 2020.

This is according to Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, speaking yesterday ahead of the 46th Union World Conference on Lung Health to be held in Cape Town from December 2-6.

Motsoaledi said: “TB has been persistent through history because its roots are deeply intertwined with economic and social factors.

“The management of TB is, therefore, a litmus test for our commitment to social equality and health for all. Unfortunately, its longevity has created a sense of acceptance that the disease is here to stay.”

Ministers of health, parliamentarians, technical partners and key stakeholders from across the globe will meet at the conference to endorse the recently announced Stop TB Partnership’s Global Plan to End TB.

Motsoaledi said the first phases would target mining communities where TB rates are high, testing current and former miners and their families and friends, as well as 90 percent of the prison population, where TB has always thrived.

The World Health Organisation’s 2015 TB report says, worldwide, 9.6 million people are estimated to have fallen ill with TB in 2014. Globally, 12 percent of the 9.6 million new TB cases in 2014 were HIV-positive people.

“It’s time for a paradigm shift in the fight against TB,” said Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease executive director, José Luis Castro. “To be successful, countries need to read the plan and begin to implement it, which will require new financing – and mobilising new health workers on the front lines. We need to invest in research that will bring us new, simple TB diagnostic tests, new medications and, most importantly, a better vaccine.”

Meanwhile, scientists at UCT, in partnership with the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Seattle in the US, recently completed a decade-long project to develop a biomarker test that predicts whether a person is at risk of developing TB. A two-year clinical trial will begin in the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in 2016. South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative director Associate Professor Mark Hatherill said the test was created through the detection of an RNA signature, one of three major biological macromolecules essential for all known forms of life.

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