SA - XDR TB SA-1 Now In 'Every Hospital And Clinic'
rense.com
>>CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- More than 3.5-million people have aready succumbed to the combined onslaught of Tuberculosis+Aids in his country since 2002, and some 6,5-million people now are infected with the human-immune-deficiency virus (HIV) leading inevitably to the deadly Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) -- now made so much worse by a new mutation with tuberculosis.
This past year, the South African health crisis moved from its "chronic" stage into a state of emergency after the discovery of a second, even deadlier epidemic: a unique mutation of TB+the AIDS virus was beginning to kill off hospital and clinic patients very rapidly and is now spreading so fast that within six months it was identified in every clinic and hospital in the country.
This new mutated strain combining TB+AIDS is airborne, highly infectious and untreatable with any known medicine available in South Africa today. There is no vaccine against it.
This airborne TB+AIDS infection is now spreading very rapidly among the AIDS-infected population also because the Mbeki-regime has a policy not to quarantine such suspected patients until their confirmation is returned from the laboratories, usually six weeks later. Such patients simply continue attending outpatient clinics where they mingle with many other people and spread the disease rapidly.
This new TB+AIDS epidemic has a proven kill-rate of 98% in South African patients -- and kills such patients within twenty days.
It has now been identified in clinics and hospitals all over South Africa and has even spread to neighbouring Kenya and Lesotho according to Medesins sans Frontieres.
The already AIDS-burdened SA health system is being overwhelmed by this second, much deadlier epidemic and most TB-hospitals' isolation wards now have become TB-hospices where doctors and nurses are waging a desperate battle to find a cure for their deadly-ill patients.
One patient identified with 'multiple-drug-resistant' TB+AIDS walked out of a SA TB hospital recently and returned home to Lesotho - where he died at a Medisins sans Frontieres clinic where none of the usual TB-medicines had any effect on him.
Meanwhile the SA laboratories, which for years have been grossly underfunded and understaffed, often can only give confirmation of the new strain within six weeks of being sent the sputum-test -- by which time the patient has already died.
At least five SA nurses have already succumbed to the new XDR-TB +AIDS epidemic in South Africa since October 2006 -- four at a TB hospital in KwaZulu-Natal; and one nurse succumbed of it at the Pollsmoor Prison Hospital, where an inmate was also hurriedly transferred to a TB-hospital where he died of the XDR-TB+AIDS mutated-strain.
Yet amidst this overwhelming health-care crisis in South Africa, the SA president -- known for his micro-managing of every department-- now has fired his pro-science deputy health minister - the only high-level official who maintained a scientific approach to combating this new epidemic and encouraged a programme for developing an AIDS-vaccine inside South Africa.
Mrs Madlala-Routledge was fired because she had allegedly taken an 'unauthorised trip' to Spain, for which she had not obtained the 'prerequisite permission of the President ".
Ministers and deputy ministers need the president's approval to travel outside the country.
It's being claimed that her submitted request for approval had languished over a mix-up over the travel dates -- and that Mbeki had only turned down her request for the trip once she and her party of three -- including her AIDS-activist son -- had already arrived in Spain. The 'mixup over the dates' involved a mere day: she had left only one day earlier than had been indicated on her request.
South Africa's deputy health-minister had been invited by the International Aids Vaccine Initiative to address their seminar on AIDS vaccines scheduled for June 12 to 15 2007 in Spain.
Through her office, South Africa has been giving its cooperation in the the desperate, worldwide drive to find a vaccine for AIDS. It is estimated that without a vaccine, at lest 50-million people will die of AIDS-related diseases (including the new XDR-TB+AIDS strain in South Africa) within the next ten years.
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Mbeki Fires Only Pro-Western Science Health Official
This country's increasingly dictatorial president Thabo Mbeki's decision to fire his only pro-Western-science top health official -- his deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge -- was a "dreadful error of judgement", the country's only independent Aids- activist organisation 'Treatment Action Campaign' has warned.
Parliamentarian Mrs Patricia de Lille and other opposition party MPs also sharply criticised Mbeki for firing the pro-Western- science-oriented deputy health minister -- with De Lille claiming that the country's second-highest health official had been 'set up to take the fall'. Mrs De Lille pointed out that the deputy health-minister's 'was well-known er honesty'. Mrs Madlala- Routledge's son Simon is a pro-AIDS-treatment activist and the deputy health-minister herself has been very supportive in a campaign to develop new AIDS vaccines, siding against Mbeki's unscientific views towards the Hiv-AIDS epidemic.
This country's increasingly dictatorial president Thabo Mbeki's decision to fire his only pro-Western-science top health official -- his deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge -- was a "dreadful error of judgement", the country's only independent Aids- activist organisation 'Treatment Action Campaign' has warned.
The fired deputy health minister now is expected to repay the total costs for the trip which amounted to R161,000. (about $16,000).
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