Issued by Department of Health
12 October 2006
The SA Department of Health has organised a two-day meeting to discuss multi-drug resistance (MDR) and extremely-drug resistance (XDR) tuberculosis.
The meeting will be held in Johannesburg on Tuesday and Wednesday next week (17-18 October 2006).
This is as a result of an urgent request by the Minister of Health Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to meet with experts from the Word Health Organisation (WHO) to assist to consolidate and review the national and regional strategy and action plans to deal with XDR-TB.
The Department has invited the WHO, SADC Ministers of Health and their TB experts, heads of SA Departments of Health, their TB programme managers and Communication officers from all nine provinces.
Also to attend the meeting are scientists from the SA Medical Research Council (MRC), SA National Health Laboratories Services (NHLS), SA Mining Sector, Pharmaceutical Industry, private sector and various universities.
The objective of the meeting is to obtain a briefing on the status quo with regard to the management and prevention of TB, MDR and XDR TB. The meeting will also come up with an MDR and XDR TB strategy, which will talk to all the countries-specific TB programmes.
This is a follow-up to the Minister Tshabalala-Msimang’s meeting with TB experts, clinicians and laboratory scientists in Johannesburg on 18 September 2006, about the nature and extent of the problem of XDR TB.
The experts recommended that the country urgently needed to strengthen its TB control programme, surveillance systems and infection control systems among other things.
Given the mobility of people in Southern Africa, the Minister also met with the SADC Ministers of Health in Mozambique Maputo on 22 September 2006, to brief them about the situation in South Africa.
The Ministers agreed that the XDR TB challenge needed a regional approach, taking into consideration that TB is a challenge in SADC counties and the free movement of people within the region and continent.
Arrangements will be made for media coverage and will be announced in due course.
Contact: Charity Bhengu @ 083 679 7424