THE boiling anti-foreigner sentiment in neighbouring South Africa being advanced by a vigilante group, Operation Dudula is likely to have a negative impact on the treatment outcomes of South African based Zimbabweans with Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (DR-TB), a top TB expert has warned.
By Staff Reporter
The cautioning comes in the midst of indications that South Africa is a DR-TB endemic country and Zimbabwe immigrants who reside in South Africa make up a sizable number of DR-TB new cases recorded annually in Zimbabwe. However, of late, Operation Dudula has been barring undocumented foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans from entering healthcare premises to seek healthcare services, a move public health experts have criticised vehemently.
Responding to a question during the just ended Kunda-Nqob’iTB (KN-TB) Media Orientation on TB Control workshop, Dr Tawanda Mapuranga, the TB-HIV Officer in the Union Zimbabwe Trust (UZT) said the situation in South Africa could lead to a spike in new DR-TB infections both in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Yes indeed the prevailing social political situation in South Africa will have a negative impact on the occurrence of DR-TB cases. You find that a lot of people may fail to get treatment or attention on time leading to spread of DR-TB and when new people get the TB, they will get it as Drug resistant TB,” said Dr Mapunranga.
He added that unlike other forms of TB, DR-TB requires more expensive treatment and a prolonged period under treatment and this will have a greater impact with regards to the medicines availed to support the TB patients.
“Because there are these instabilities, even when the TB patients knows that they have TB, they might not go to healthcare sectors because they know they might be attacked. They might run away from their areas of residence leading to initial loss to follow up. They may delay seeking the treatment and they may end up dying. It terms of fatality, DR-TB is the worst, and it kills if no treatment is availed on time. So this is bad for the TB patient and also for the health system as we will end up with a lot of people with DR-TB.”
Drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) is a form of tuberculosis which has developed resistance to the main medicines used to treat TB can be resistant to one or more anti-TB medicines Is transmitted in the same manner as drug susceptible TB that is through droplets, through speaking, singing etc and can affect the lungs (pulmonary) or other areas outside the lungs (extrapulmonary).
It is estimated that Zimbabwe has about 700-800 cases of Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (TB) with only a third of these cases having been confirmed.
Dr Rutendo C Manyati, PMDT Officer the Union Zimbabwe Trust said there was need to improve DR-TB case finding in Zimbabwe.
“As a country, we actually have high estimate for DR-TB. In 2021, it had been estimated that we have about 700-800 cases of DR-TB in the country. However, we only managed to find about a third of those cases. The majority of them were are actually put on oral regimens for treatment of DR- which is actually a win for the country. However, we need to make an improvement on the number of cases that we are finding.
She added that they were in the process of printing the latest TB diagnostic algorithm and the other partners on the TB front have also procured new Gene-expert machines, the Gene Expert XTB-TR which also making It easier and faster to diagnose DR-TB and initiate patients on the most appropriate regimens.
