International conf to discuss TB prevention

Over 3,000 delegates are set to attend the annual conference at the Cape Town International Conference Centre on Thursday, 8 November, themed 'Confronting the challenges of HIV and multi drug resistant TB cases in TB prevention and care'. The event will run until 12 November.

Mayoral Committee Member for Health Martin Fienies expressed the hope that the conference would address the constraints to effective prevention and care while taking into consideration broader political, economic and sectoral issues.

“We look forward to candid debate on the challenges we jointly confront, debate that will contribute to a better understanding of how we can ensure more effective, efficient and sustainable services, interventions and programmes,” said Fienies.

Such programmes and interventions, he said must be built on, and benefit from, solid context-sensitive research, and be geared towards better health service delivery and the further development of staff in all countries.

Cape Town's City Health will be sending a number of staff members to the conference and has arranged site visits to clinics for those delegates wanting to see how TB services are delivered in the clinics.

On Tuesday an international press delegation is set to visit two clinics.

“This conference affords the city the opportunity to focus the international spotlight on and showcase the good work done by local staff,” said Executive Director for City Health Dr Ivan Toms.

Last year, the City's Health Directorate, Dr Toms said the city reached its best TB cure rate ever for new smear positive TB cases at 76% cured, and 82% successful completion of treatment.

“Epidemiological modelling suggests that if 85% of new smear positive TB cases can be cured, then the epidemic will begin to decline as the infectious pool in the community shrinks,” he said at the time.

In 2006 Cape Town recorded the second highest caseload of TB in South Africa, with Durban registering the most.

The city reported 27,017 cases reaching a 76% cure rate and 82% successful completion of treatment rate.

These results showed huge gains in cure rates in many of the eight health sub districts in the city.

Khayelitsha, which has 21% of the caseload, showed a 17% improvement in cure rate from the previous year.

Mitchells Plain showed a 7% improvement, and Klipfontein sub district areas of Athlone, Guguletu and Nyanga also did extremely well with an 8% improvement on the previous year to reach a cure rate of 81%.

The overall cure rate for Cape Town has risen by 7% as these three sub-districts are the high burden areas of the city.

These improved TB results are supported by a successful HIV prevention and treatment programme run by the Provincial Health Department and City Health.

At the end of September this year, 20,688 clients were on anti-retroviral (ARV's) treatment at primary care facilities in Cape Town, 435 at Metro Institutions and 1,805 at tertiary level facilities.

An untreated HIV positive person therefore has a 10% yearly chance of contracting TB. This compares with an HIV negative person having only a 10% lifetime risk of contracting TB.

Multi drug resistant TB (MDR) cases in the city have remained fairly constant at 1% of new cases and 4% of re-treatment cases.

From January to September 2007, 347 new MDR TB cases had been diagnosed and placed on MDR treatment.

There have been 42 confirmed extremely drug resistant TB (XDR TB) cases, of which 27 have been hospitalised and 15 have died. Of those cases, 30% were known to be HIV positive.

Article published courtesy of BuaNews