tuberculosis - The African Mirror

Apr

2024

Over 100 inmates die in DR Congo prisons since start of year

More than 100 inmates have died so far this year in the Democratic Republic of Congo's underfunded and chronically overcrowded prisons, a U.N. human rights official said. The main cause of the deaths was contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, which spread easily in crowded facilities and require unavailable medical attention. Insufficient food also contributed, the official said. The U.N.'s Joint Humans Rights Office has so far confirmed 104 deaths in detention since the start of 2024, its director Patrice Vahard said. This compares to 222 prison deaths in 2023, he said in an interview. Most of the recorded deaths occurred…

May

2023

By The African Mirror

African scientists are working to pool data that decodes diseases – a giant step

HEALTH

INFECTIOUS disease outbreaks in African countries are, unfortunately, all too common. Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Uganda; Marburg virus in Guinea or Equatorial Guinea; cholera in Malawi; malaria and tuberculosis are among them. These diseases do not respect human-made or porous borders. So it’s essential that scientists in Africa are able to generate and share critical data on the pathogens in time to inform public-health decisions. Authors ALAN CHRISTOFFELS, Director South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape SOFONIAS KIFLE TESSEMA, Program Lead for Pathogen Genomics at the Africa CDC Genomic sequencing technologies are…

Mar

2023

By The African Mirror

TB kills 75,000 children in Africa every year: how this can stop

HEALTH

TUBERCULOSIS (TB) is a preventable and curable disease. Half of the world’s 30 highest TB burden countries are in Africa. In many of these countries, TB is the leading cause of death across age groups, but especially among children. Globally, TB is the leading cause of death by any single infectious agent (above COVID-19 and HIV). Author GRAEME HODDINOTT, Socio-behavioural Scientist and Senior Researcher, Stellenbosch University The people most affected by TB are often the most socio-economically marginalised, with the fewest reserves to take them through the treatment journey. This is extremely challenging, with complex, often delayed diagnosis, many months…

Mar

2022

By The African Mirror

Like COVID, TB is a pandemic and must be treated as an emergency

HEALTH

IN 1993, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared tuberculosis (TB) a global public health emergency. It urged nations to coordinate efforts to avert millions of deaths. Author RICHARD E. CHAISSON, Director, Center for Tuberculosis Research, Johns Hopkins University In January 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19, another airborne infectious disease, a public health emergency of international concern. The similarity between the global responses to these two pandemics ends there. The scientific, public health, medical, and pharmaceutical communities’ responses to COVID-19 in the past two years has been spectacular. Within two weeks of declaring COVID-19 a global emergency, the WHO had convened…

Sep

2021

By The African Mirror

COVID-19 disruption causing many deaths from TB, AIDS in poorest countries, fund says

COVID-19

EMMA FARGE HUNDREDS of thousands of people will die of tuberculosis left untreated because of disruption to healthcare systems in poor countries caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a global aid fund said. In a few of the world's poorest countries, excess deaths from AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) could even exceed those from the coronavirus itself, said the head of the Geneva-based aid body, known as the Global Fund. The Fund's annual report for 2020, released on Wednesday, showed that the number of people treated for drug-resistant tuberculosis in countries where it operates fell by 19%. A decline of 11% was…

Sep

2021

By The African Mirror

Many East Africans miss out on disease diagnosis. What must be done about it

HEALTH

EARLY diagnosis is crucial for the effective management of any disease. In Africa, this isn’t always possible which affects the ability of countries to bring diseases under control. WILBER SABIITI, Senior Research Fellow in Medicine, University of St Andrews My colleagues and I conducted research into the barriers to diagnosis for tuberculosis (TB) in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. We also wanted to identify what opportunities there were to maximise the use of diagnostics in healthcare settings. We found that, in all three countries, the uptake of diagnostics was highest – over 90% – at large referral hospitals in major municipalities…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

How COVID-19 measures have affected food safety in East Africa

HEALTH

FOODBORNE diseases are thought to impose a health burden on society comparable to the “big three”: malaria, HIV/AIDs and tuberculosis. FLORENCE MUTUA, Scientist, International Livestock Research Institute DELIA GRACE, Professor Food Safety Systems at the Natural Resources Institute (UK) and contributing scientist ILRI, International Livestock Research Institute ERASTUS KANG'ETHE, Professor, University of Nairobi Common foodborne diseases affect tens of millions of people every year. They include salmonellosis, which causes stomach upsets, norovirus, which can cause severe vomiting and diarrhoea, and listeriosis, which can cause severe infections of the bloodstream and brain. Children and people with weak immune systems are affected…

Mar

2021

By The African Mirror

TB treatments are notoriously hard to stick to: shorter regimens offer a breakthrough

HEALTH

TUBERCULOSIS (TB) is a major cause of illness and death around the world. In 2019, 10 million people fell ill with TB and close to 1.4 million people died. Most (95%) of the cases are in low- and middle-income countries. VIOLET CHIHOTA, Lead Senior Scientist, Aurum Institute It’s estimated that a quarter of the global population is infected with TB – that’s around 1.8 billion people. Most infected people have no symptoms and are not contagious. Most of them don’t even know they’re infected – their TB is latent. If left untreated, latent TB infection can progress to TB disease,…

Mar

2021

By The African Mirror

First ever national survey shows the extent of South Africa’s TB problem

HEALTH

SOUTH Africa’s long-awaited tuberculosis (TB) prevalence survey results were recently released. This is the first national prevalence survey of its kind for TB in South Africa. EMILY B. WONG, Assistant Professor, Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) ALISON GRANT, Professor of International Health at LSHTM and Member of Faculty, Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) TB prevalence surveys are difficult and expensive to do, and so are not carried out routinely, but have been done in many high burden countries following a World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation in 2007. In the absence of prevalence survey data, TB estimates are based on the…

Feb

2021

By The African Mirror

South Africa looks to curb TB infections amid COVID-19 disruptions

HEALTH

SOUTH Africa will ramp up home delivery of medicines to patients and expand the use of chest X-rays for tuberculosis (TB) screening in communities as it looks to contain new infections since the COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted health services, the health minister said yesterday. Designated by the World Health Organization as a high burden country, South Africa registers around 60,000 deaths from TB each year, making it the country's leading infectious disease killer closely intertwined with one of the world's highest rates of HIV/Aids. As COVID-19 pummelled South Africa since first being detected in March last year, many TB clinics…