Moin zusammen,
ich habe schon im Quo-Vadis-Thread Links zur XDR (Extreme drug resistant) TB eingestellt. Im Folgenden habe ich, meiner sonstigen Übung entgegen handelnd, eine private Meinungsäußerung im Volltext eingestellt, deren Relevanz ich nicht zu bewerten vermag. Sollte sie sich jedoch als zutreffend erweisen, wird die zunehmende Gefährdung uns bei unseren Reisen in der Zukunft wohl begleiten. Vielleicht haben unsere Apotheker und Ärzte ja private Verbindungen und können Näheres herausfinden.
Im "Tube-Link" geht es darum, dass mit XDR-TB Infizierte aus der Quarantäne entlassen werden wollen und dass die offizielle Linie der Gesundheitsbehörden ist, dass niemand gegen seinen Willen im Hospital festgehalten werden darf. Aber es gibt offensichtlich keine medizinische Behandlungsmöglichkeit, die weitere Ansteckungen verhindert.
Verlinkung und Hervorhebung sind von mir.
Media silence about SA's Super-TB epidemic?
Date Posted: Monday 28-May-2007
Why is TB-Alert UK not warning about XDR-TB in South Africa?
May 24 2007 -- THE NETHERLANDS. The following message was sent by Adriana Stuijt to the TB-ALERT-UK organisation (email: awareness@tbalert.org) -- as follows: "Please don't forward this to the South African authorities -- because I believe they are deliberately keeping silent about the out-of-control XDR-TB epidemic which is now entering the mainstream population in this country and even killing healthy people.
"Shouldn't TB Alert be warning very actively in many high-profile TV and news media interviews about the fact that more than 1,054 people per 100,000 of the South African population are now being diagnosed as infected with XDR-TB in South Africa (population 47-million)?
Aren't you worried about the fact that the SA government is so anti-science that it now is actually suing a TB-hospital in Gauteng with demands that they release thirteen so-called 'forcibly detained' XDR-TB patients because their 'human rights are being violated?"
The management of Sizwe Hospital in Johannesburg won't release these patients because they are untreatable with existing medicines and thus remain highly infectious -- they continue to pose a dangerous health risk to society if they were to be released. View the SA state-broadcaster SABC-TV's news item about this class-action law suit against Sizwe hospital in Johannesburg here:
It is very clear by now that the South African government maintains such an unscientific and indeed confused policy towards the XDR-TB epidemic that this confusion is allowing this untreatable and very deadly strain to spread very rapidly into the entire population - not only hiv-infected or TB-coinfected people are dying from this, but also previously perfectly healthy people. My contacts tell me that XDR-TB is also terrifying the population at large mainly because the SA authorities send out such confusing signals: terrified patients and nursing staff are seen fleeing from hospitals as soon as XDR-TB patients arrive; that some XDR-TB patientsare simply sent home for "treatment" because there aren't enough hospitals beds to accommodate them all; that this particular strain has a 100% mortality rate; that none of the available medicines seem to have any effect on them; and that it kills these patients within 20 days, but often much sooner.
I am personally totally aghast at this very rapid spread of this epidemic -- which was first identified in October 2006 in Pongola, KwaZulu-Natal.
The first outbreaks in the Western Cape in 2003 and 2004 of this particular strain were however completely contained because that particular province's health department had done everything to contain it - even tracing down Patient Zero all the way to Zambia and finding others in Zimbabwe...
Due to the rather odd lack of recent publicity about this from the South African health department itself, I also wonder whether the UK and indeed the European health authorities are even aware of this very real infection danger of XDR-TB from South African travellers?
It's much more dangerous and infectious than bird-flu... so why this media silence of about the fact that XDR-TB is now taking on epidemic proportions in South Africa? Authorities like yourselves cannot rely on the SA health authorities to provide you with the latest, truthful facts: after all, the SA authorities also failed to report the first two outbreaks of this particularly virulent XDR-TB strain (SA1 strain) in 2003 and 2004 to the World Health Organisation and to the Centres for Disease Control - even though it was contained, it should also have been reported as a completely new strain. The last official SA news release about this epidemic was in March 2007 and there has been a deafening silence ever since -- however my own very excellent medical contacts in South Africa warn that things are going rather badly out of control now, and that local clinics and hospitals especially in KwaZulu Natal, but also in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng provinces, now either follow their own science-ruled guidelines or are trying to make sense of the rather confusing government guidelines which won't let them isolate any of the diagnosed XDR-TB patients if they refuse treatment and also place severe financial constraints on their use of the correct medicines. In Europe, are there adequate TB-prevention controls in place at all our ports of entry, for instance, or are just 10% of the southern-African travellers being 'checked for TB-infections' as was still the case a year ago? And are the travellers to South Africa -- the World Cup 2010 with its 350,000 soccer fans to that country springs readily to mind -- being warned about this XDR-TB outbreak -- and do they now about the fact that even healthy people (not just hiv-infected people as is being claimed by the SA health authorities) can be infected with this quite easily by carriers who just have to cough the bacillae into the atmosphere around them? I know of at least two perfectly healthy people -- one a baby in the Western Cape and the other one a 41-year old Afrikaner woman in the North West province -- who had also died of diagnosed XDR-TB, in other words they were both infected by unknown carriers in their own environment, both were NOT hiv-positive, had never been treated for TB before and also had no other immune-deficiencies at all.
None of the available medicines had any effect on their condition and they died very quickly.
It's worrying that TB-Alert is not ringing the alarm bells about this in all the UK news media? Yours sincerely Adriana Stuijtretired medical journalist - South Africa - ex-Johannesburg Sunday Times
Gruß, Michael
ich habe schon im Quo-Vadis-Thread Links zur XDR (Extreme drug resistant) TB eingestellt. Im Folgenden habe ich, meiner sonstigen Übung entgegen handelnd, eine private Meinungsäußerung im Volltext eingestellt, deren Relevanz ich nicht zu bewerten vermag. Sollte sie sich jedoch als zutreffend erweisen, wird die zunehmende Gefährdung uns bei unseren Reisen in der Zukunft wohl begleiten. Vielleicht haben unsere Apotheker und Ärzte ja private Verbindungen und können Näheres herausfinden.
Im "Tube-Link" geht es darum, dass mit XDR-TB Infizierte aus der Quarantäne entlassen werden wollen und dass die offizielle Linie der Gesundheitsbehörden ist, dass niemand gegen seinen Willen im Hospital festgehalten werden darf. Aber es gibt offensichtlich keine medizinische Behandlungsmöglichkeit, die weitere Ansteckungen verhindert.
Verlinkung und Hervorhebung sind von mir.
Media silence about SA's Super-TB epidemic?
Date Posted: Monday 28-May-2007
Why is TB-Alert UK not warning about XDR-TB in South Africa?
May 24 2007 -- THE NETHERLANDS. The following message was sent by Adriana Stuijt to the TB-ALERT-UK organisation (email: awareness@tbalert.org) -- as follows: "Please don't forward this to the South African authorities -- because I believe they are deliberately keeping silent about the out-of-control XDR-TB epidemic which is now entering the mainstream population in this country and even killing healthy people.
"Shouldn't TB Alert be warning very actively in many high-profile TV and news media interviews about the fact that more than 1,054 people per 100,000 of the South African population are now being diagnosed as infected with XDR-TB in South Africa (population 47-million)?
Aren't you worried about the fact that the SA government is so anti-science that it now is actually suing a TB-hospital in Gauteng with demands that they release thirteen so-called 'forcibly detained' XDR-TB patients because their 'human rights are being violated?"
The management of Sizwe Hospital in Johannesburg won't release these patients because they are untreatable with existing medicines and thus remain highly infectious -- they continue to pose a dangerous health risk to society if they were to be released. View the SA state-broadcaster SABC-TV's news item about this class-action law suit against Sizwe hospital in Johannesburg here:
It is very clear by now that the South African government maintains such an unscientific and indeed confused policy towards the XDR-TB epidemic that this confusion is allowing this untreatable and very deadly strain to spread very rapidly into the entire population - not only hiv-infected or TB-coinfected people are dying from this, but also previously perfectly healthy people. My contacts tell me that XDR-TB is also terrifying the population at large mainly because the SA authorities send out such confusing signals: terrified patients and nursing staff are seen fleeing from hospitals as soon as XDR-TB patients arrive; that some XDR-TB patientsare simply sent home for "treatment" because there aren't enough hospitals beds to accommodate them all; that this particular strain has a 100% mortality rate; that none of the available medicines seem to have any effect on them; and that it kills these patients within 20 days, but often much sooner.
I am personally totally aghast at this very rapid spread of this epidemic -- which was first identified in October 2006 in Pongola, KwaZulu-Natal.
The first outbreaks in the Western Cape in 2003 and 2004 of this particular strain were however completely contained because that particular province's health department had done everything to contain it - even tracing down Patient Zero all the way to Zambia and finding others in Zimbabwe...
Due to the rather odd lack of recent publicity about this from the South African health department itself, I also wonder whether the UK and indeed the European health authorities are even aware of this very real infection danger of XDR-TB from South African travellers?
It's much more dangerous and infectious than bird-flu... so why this media silence of about the fact that XDR-TB is now taking on epidemic proportions in South Africa? Authorities like yourselves cannot rely on the SA health authorities to provide you with the latest, truthful facts: after all, the SA authorities also failed to report the first two outbreaks of this particularly virulent XDR-TB strain (SA1 strain) in 2003 and 2004 to the World Health Organisation and to the Centres for Disease Control - even though it was contained, it should also have been reported as a completely new strain. The last official SA news release about this epidemic was in March 2007 and there has been a deafening silence ever since -- however my own very excellent medical contacts in South Africa warn that things are going rather badly out of control now, and that local clinics and hospitals especially in KwaZulu Natal, but also in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng provinces, now either follow their own science-ruled guidelines or are trying to make sense of the rather confusing government guidelines which won't let them isolate any of the diagnosed XDR-TB patients if they refuse treatment and also place severe financial constraints on their use of the correct medicines. In Europe, are there adequate TB-prevention controls in place at all our ports of entry, for instance, or are just 10% of the southern-African travellers being 'checked for TB-infections' as was still the case a year ago? And are the travellers to South Africa -- the World Cup 2010 with its 350,000 soccer fans to that country springs readily to mind -- being warned about this XDR-TB outbreak -- and do they now about the fact that even healthy people (not just hiv-infected people as is being claimed by the SA health authorities) can be infected with this quite easily by carriers who just have to cough the bacillae into the atmosphere around them? I know of at least two perfectly healthy people -- one a baby in the Western Cape and the other one a 41-year old Afrikaner woman in the North West province -- who had also died of diagnosed XDR-TB, in other words they were both infected by unknown carriers in their own environment, both were NOT hiv-positive, had never been treated for TB before and also had no other immune-deficiencies at all.
None of the available medicines had any effect on their condition and they died very quickly.
It's worrying that TB-Alert is not ringing the alarm bells about this in all the UK news media? Yours sincerely Adriana Stuijtretired medical journalist - South Africa - ex-Johannesburg Sunday Times
Gruß, Michael
