MSF: Alarming Scope of Drug-Resistant TB
March 21, 2012
Nolitha Tsilana, a MSF nurse, delivers TB pills to a patient at Lizo Nobanda TB Care Centre in Khayelitsha township, Cape Town.
A medical aid group says the spread of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis is much greater than previously thought. Doctors Without Borders calls the situation alarming. MDR-TB is a form of tuberculosis that does not respond to standard treatment and can kill in a matter of months.
“Wherever we’re looking for drug-resistant TB we’re finding it in very alarming numbers. And that suggests to us that the current statistics that are being published about the prevalence of MDR-TB are really just scratching the surface of the problem,” said Dr. Leslie Shanks, medical director for the group, also known as MSF.
MSF has been collecting data from its clinics around the world.
“We have evidence from Asia, Africa, central Asia. Wherever we are working we are finding this problem,” she said.
It’s not just showing up in many places, it’s showing up in large numbers.
“In our program, for example, in the northern part of Uzbekistan we’ve started to test systematically all of our TB patients for drug resistance, whether or not they appear to be at risk for drug resistance. And we’re finding that two-thirds of our patients are MDR, which is just an astounding number,” she said.
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