Cape Town - South Africa has been included in a list of the worst 12 countries when it comes to the burden of tuberculosis, behind countries such as Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Uganda.
Released on Wednesday, the World Health Organisation TB report, which looked at 2012 TB data from almost 200 countries, has painted a bleak picture of the country’s TB burden.
According to the report, South Africa will not meet its Millennium Development Goals of halving the number of TB deaths by 2015 and halving TB prevalence.
Of the five Brics countries, South Africa and Russia had the poorest scores. While Russia had reduced the number of new cases compared with South Africa, its treatment success rate, at 65 percent, was the poorest in the world. South Africa had a success rate of 77 percent.
While there had been some global progress, with a 45 percent reduction in TB mortality over the past two decades and a drop in the number of new infections, this decline was not fast enough, the report said.
About 8.6 million people worldwide contracted TB last year, with about 1.1 million of them also being HIV positive. Most of the co-infection cases were in Africa.
An estimated 530 000 children became ill with TB and 74 000 children who were HIV-negative died of TB. Globally, 450 000 people developed multidrug-resistant TB, and last year 170 000 of them died.
More men than women died, but TB remained among the top three killers of women worldwide, with 410 000 women dying last year. The report said that almost 3 million cases in 12 countries, including South Africa, had not been diagnosed or reported to national TB control programmes.
The authors of the report said: “South Africa has the highest TB rate and the highest burden of TB-HIV co-infection. TB incidence is estimated to be increasing.” The report recommended greater engagement between the government, NGOs and the private sector.
Doctors Without Borders raised concerns, arguing that governments’ failure to improve TB diagnosis and treatment had led to “a crisis on a global scale”. - Cape Argus