New Drugs for TB

I was pleased to read in this weekend’s newspaper that there is new research into a vaccine booster for Tuberculosis (TB) in people with AIDs, in Khayelitsha. South Africa has the second highest rate of TB in the world and in 2008 more than half a million people died of TB here. The disease is exacerbated by the high incidence of HIV/AIDS, of course.

A few years ago I volunteered at the state hospital, Brooklyn Chest. Specifically, I did baby massage and helped with bathing the babies and generally spent time with them. It broke my heart that there were so many children in the hospital, from the poorest social background – single, unmarried mothers, unemployed, AIDS, etc. TB is a preventable disease. It is one of the childhood vaccinations along with measles, mumps, polio and rubella. Yet children are dying or becoming permanently disabled from the effects of the disease.

Some children had had the disease for a while before presenting for treatment and it had spread throughout their bodies and to the brain, resulting in meningitis. I saw children permanently disabled because they had not had the BCG vaccination that all babies have to have.

I discovered that very little research had been done on new medication and the drugs being used were the same ones that had been used for 50 years. It seemed that drug companies had little interest in developing new medication since there was little money to be made. The treatment for TB involves a cocktail of antibiotics which make the patients feel very ill and compliance is poor because of the length of treatment (6-9 months) and is compounded by the poor socio-economic conditions of those affected.

I continued to volunteer for about three years before the scare of the outbreak of drug-resistant TB. I felt that I was putting my own family at risk and it was with a heavy heart that I decided to stop. I hope that this is the start of more research into prevention and treatment of this disease.