WHO urges South Africa to curb TB killer

JOHANNESBURG, Sep 8 (Reuters) UN health officials urged South Africa to act quickly to stamp out a highly resistant form of tuberculosis that has killed 52 people and threatens the country's many vulnerable HIV patients.

The United Nations body said yesterday a response akin to recent global efforts to control SARS and bird flu was needed to curb the strain of the disease which is highly drug resistant and has been reported in 28 South African hospitals.

''This must be taken with the same degree of seriousness. There is no time to wait,'' said Ernesto Jaramillo, a medical officer with the Stop TB Department of the WHO, at a news conference in Johannesburg.

The briefing was held during a conference of health experts and scientists from 11 southern African countries to discuss how to contain the killer disease.

TB poses a grave risk to HIV-positive people as it thrives in weakened immune systems. South African has one of the highest HIV caseloads in the world with one in nine people infected with the virus that causes AIDS. In South Africa, about 60 per cent of adults infected with TB are also HIV-positive.

''For a country that has such a high co-infection rate then it would be neglect if there was no national interest,'' Jaramillo told Reuters on the sidelines ofthe conference.

Officials said the strain could spread beyond the poor rural community in South Africa's eastern KwaZulu-Natal region where 53 people have been diagnosed. Of those, 52 have died and all those tested for HIV were positive.

There is no vaccine to prevent infection of TB, which kills 1.7 million people a year globally, but antibiotic treatments can end or cure most strains. However, the new super-bug appears to be multi-drug resistant.

Isolated cases of XDR-TB are present in every corner of the world but health officials know little about it.

WHO, Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the South African Medical Research Council presented a seven-point ''action plan'' to combat the strain worldwide.

It made counting the number of people infected worldwide by XDR-TB, or extreme drug resistant tuberculosis, the top priority.

Officials say the only other documented outbreak of the deadly strain in South Africa was several years ago when six people died in the central Gauteng province and were later found to be carriers of the XDR-TB.

African health ministers one year ago declared TB an emergency and called for scaled up control efforts.

Reuters BDP VV0921