Word: africa
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...Church of Scotland Hospital in Tugela Ferry, South Africa, sits in an arid valley among the mountains of KwaZulu-Natal. Occupying a dozen or so tin-roofed, low-slung buildings, the hospital serves its rural patients well: Women come to have babies, H.I.V. patients register to receive their medications, and those infected with tuberculosis check in for a chance to recover from an ancient scourge...
...doesn't have to be this way. TB is an entirely preventable and treatable disease. And the drug-resistant strains beginning to emerge in Africa, Russia, China and India, say experts, are epidemics of our own making. Unlike H.I.V., the tubercle bacillus succumbs to powerful medications. But the drugs are not where they need to be, and when they are, spotty monitoring and poor health infrastructure make it hard to ensure that patients take the daily pills or frequent injections they must receive for six months to eradicate the infection. Stopping treatment too early allows the small population of drug...
...sputum-based screens can take anywhere from two weeks to two months, during which time doctors protectively place infected patients on first-line drugs too weak to battle the aggressive strain effectively rather than risk the overuse of last-resort medications that would only feed drug resistance. And in Africa in particular, tuberculosis is nurtured alongside AIDS in a deadly double hit: The weakened immune systems of H.I.V. patients make them more vulnerable to TB infection, and because their crippled immune systems can no longer mount proper responses, H.I.V. patients infected with TB often don't produce the recognizable symptoms...
Officials in Africa's Lesotho, where 10% of the population is infected with MDR and 30% is H.I.V.-positive, are relying on a collaboration between the government and Partners in Health, which provides private funding, to address another challenge in TB care: the need to isolate the sickest patients to prevent them from spreading the disease. Lesotho now boasts its first 10-to-15-room facility equipped with negative airflow, which contains and filters air circulating through TB wards. A single such center is hardly enough, but it is a start. "It shows you it is possible," says Raviglione...
...doesn't have to be this way. TB is an entirely preventable and treatable disease. And the drug-resistant strains beginning to emerge in Africa, Russia, China and India, say experts, are epidemics of our own making. Unlike HIV, the tubercle bacillus succumbs to powerful medications. But these drugs are not where they need to be, and when they are, spotty monitoring and poor health infrastructure make it hard to ensure that patients take their daily doses for the six months that are needed to eradicate the infection--all of which encourages drug-resistant strains to survive and keep...