Cape Town - The provincial legislature has agreed to establish a tuberculosis caucus for the Western Cape as an ad hoc committee by the end of August, more than a year after the South African TB Caucus (SATBC) proposed it.
In March 2021 the SATBC, which is the local chapter of the 2 300 member global TB caucus of MPs in 130 countries across the world, told the health standing committee that setting up a Western Cape TB caucus would enable them to advocate for the allocation of budgets ring-fenced for TB and to review any related legislation.
On Friday, provincial health assistant director Nicky van der Walt gave the committee an overview of tuberculosis in the Western Cape and said there had been a high number of TB cases in the year since July 2021 to June this year during which 46 119 cases of TB were diagnosed.
“During this period we had 4156 TB associated deaths. We define TB associated deaths as deaths that occur in individuals who have a TB diagnosis with no treatment success rate within three years or with a treatment success rate within one year.”
Van der Walt said that within the metro there had been 25655 TB cases diagnosed in the year, with three sub districts accounting for almost half or 48% of the cases diagnosed.
Committee member Ayanda Bans (ANC) wanted to know whether poor communities would be represented in the caucus and the role of the provincial caucus in regard to its aims and objectives.
Van der Walt said in terms of the membership of the caucus, the recommendation was that caucus members should be from the legislature and that the department would create platforms for engagement where the caucus could engage with civil society and NGOs to build consensus and have a coherent response to TB in the province.
Committee member Dan Plato (DA) said it was important not to politicise the issue of TB as the disease did not ask what party people infected were members of. Committee chairperson Wendy Kaizer-Philander (DA) said the province had already instituted initiatives such as the multi-sectoral Provincial TB Emergency Response Plan and the provincial TB dashboard.
She said: “It is now time for the legislature to join legislatures across the world in creating holistic approaches to fight TB in our communities.”