Eu também concordo com a carta enviada por mais de 50 cientistas pedindo a demissão do Ministro da Saúde da África do Sul. Ignorância pode matar mais do que conflitos armados.
Mr Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki
President
Republic of South Africa
Union Buildings
West wing
2nd Floor
Government Avenue
Pretoria
4 September 2006
Dear President Mbeki
We are members of the global scientific community working on HIV/AIDS who wish to express our deep concern at the response of the South African government to the HIV epidemic. HIV causes AIDS. Antiretrovirals are the only medications currently available that alleviate the consequences of HIV infection. The evidence supporting these statements is overwhelming and beyond dispute. Much credit for the impressive advancement of HIV science belongs to scientists and clinicians based in South Africa and elsewhere on the African continent. Their expertise should play a critical role in alleviating the awful consequences HIV has caused to South African society. We are therefore deeply concerned at how HIV science has been undermined by the South African Minister of Health, Dr Manto TshabalalaMsimang. Before and during the XVI International AIDS Conference, Dr TshabalalaMsimang expressed pseudoscientific views about the management of HIV infection. Furthermore, the South African government exhibition at the Conference featured garlic, lemons and African potatoes, with the implication that these dietary elements are alternative treatments for HIV infection. There is no scientific evidence to support such views. Good nutrition is important for all people, including people with HIV, but garlic, lemons and potatoes are not alternatives to effective medications to treat a specific viral infection and its consequences on the human immune system. Over 5 million people live with HIV in South Africa. According to the best estimates of South African actuaries, over 500,000 people without access to antiretrovirals have reached the stage of HIV disease when they now require these medicines to save their lives. We commend the South African Department of Health's Operational Plan for Comprehensive HIV and AIDS Care, Management and Treatment for South Africa released on 19 ovember 2003. This plan committed to treating over 380,000 people by this time in the public health sector. Unfortunately, fewer than half of that target number are currently receiving treatment in the public sector. Many people are therefore dying unnecessarily. We are also deeply concerned by the proliferation of unproven remedies being marketed in South Africa, some of them with the implicit or even explicit support of the Minister of Health. Slick marketing practices cause people not to take proven medications, or at best to waste money on false hopes. We condemn all those who profit from this type of quackery, at the expense of the sick and dying. We echo the words of Mr Stephen Lewis, special advisor to the UN Secretary General, that South Africa's response to AIDS is "obtuse, dilatory and negligent".
5 comentários:
Parece implicancia com a África do Sul, mas essa notícia do NYT (06/09/06) é mais uma prova da incompetência da saúde pública local.
Drug-Resistant TB in South Africa Draws Attention From U.N WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — The World Health Organization will hold an urgent meeting this week to seek ways to deal with deadly strains of tuberculosis that are virtually untreatable with standard drugs.
The meeting, in Johannesburg on Thursday and Friday, comes in response to recent reports from a number of the world’s regions about a small but growing number of cases of the deadly strains, known as extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB.
“XDR-TB poses a grave public health threat, especially in populations with high rates of H.I.V.” and few health care facilities, the health organization, a United Nations agency, said Tuesday.
The meeting will include officials from African countries and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although the resistant strains have been identified in all regions of the world, especially Asia and the former Soviet Union, the immediate goal is to help South Africa control an outbreak that killed 52 of 53 patients in a rural province in recent months. The deaths occurred swiftly, on average within 25 days, and included patients who were taking antiretroviral drugs for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.
The meeting also aims at determining whether scientists can identify some drug already on the market, or a new combination of such drugs, that would still be effective against the resistant strains of tuberculosis.
The origins of the South African outbreak are unknown, but misuse of antituberculosis drugs is the most likely explanation, said Paul P. Nunn, a World Health Organization tuberculosis expert who is expected to be at the meeting. “Whatever the practice is, it must be changed,” Dr. Nunn said in an interview.
Dr. Mario C. Raviglione, who directs the health organization’s tuberculosis program, said in an interview that “nobody at the moment can be considered an expert” about the problem.
So other aims of the meeting include adopting what experts believe are “best practice” recommendations, as well as: Strengthening standard measures like the use of masks, gowns and other means of protecting health workers from the drug-resistant strains and preventing their further spread.
Improving steps to ensure prompt diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis cases and monitoring the incidence of new drug-resistant infections.
Developing and upgrading laboratories in poor countries to do tuberculosis testing. Seeking details about two unreported outbreaks in the last 10 years that W.H.O. officials have heard about informally.
The situation is “extremely scary,” Dr. Raviglione said. But he added that officials wanted to prevent health care providers from stopping work in affected areas.
The lack of effective drugs brings doctors back to the era before antibiotics, when the limited treatment measures included chest surgery. For patients whose tuberculosis was confined to one lung, surgeons could remove a portion or whole lung, but without assurance of cure.
If the strain keeps spreading, it could exceed by “hundreds of times” the outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis in New York City in the 1990’s, Dr. Raviglione said. That outbreak was brought under control by adopting strong measures, including observation of infected patients to make sure they took their drugs properly.
Drug-Resistant TB Draws
Global Health Response
By BETSY MCKAY and MARILYN CHASE
September 9, 2006; Page A2
International health officials agreed to implement urgent measures to stem the world's largest outbreak to date of a super-resistant strain of tuberculosis that has already killed dozens of AIDS patients in South Africa.
At a two-day meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, that ended Friday, officials from the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the South African Medical Research Council said they would push to implement faster diagnostic tests and improve surveillance for the killer strain in areas where the prevalence of TB is high.
The full extent of the current outbreak of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, is unknown. The outbreak was originally detected by researchers after it ripped through a rural clinic in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, killing 52 of 53 infected patients. Most of the affected patients had HIV/AIDS. At the conference this past week, researchers said they have now found the strain in more than 100 people in 28 hospitals.
XDR-TB is all but impossible to treat under currently available regimens. While it has been detected in other parts of the world, public-health officials are particularly concerned about its emergence now in southern Africa, where large swathes of the population are infected with HIV. HIV infection promotes the activation of latent TB, while TB bacteria stimulate the progression of AIDS.
Paul Nunn, head of the WHO's TB drug-resistance team, said that among measures to combat the outbreak, local officials would survey high-risk patients to determine how widespread the killer strain is. The CDC and South African Medical Research Council also are training lab technicians in a liquid-based culture technique that cuts in half the time to diagnose TB, to between two to five weeks.
Other measures include urging local health officials to get more HIV patients on antiretroviral treatments, which will help to reduce their risk of TB.
Ecrever o próprio blog e fazer os únicos 2 comentarios .Isto é o popular cobrar o escanteio e correr para área cabecear . " Selfish ", qual é a tradução para isto mesmo ? . Ai ai ai esses egos ...
Written by Rita Jenkins| 14 September, 2006 19:57 GMT
With the second largest population of HIV-positive people in the world, South Africa is particularly vulnerable to the deadly new strain of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis that appears to be spreading across the country. A highly lethal new strain of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) has been confirmed in a patient under treatment at a Johannesburg hospital. The woman reportedly left the hospital after her diagnosis was made but has since been convinced to return.
Authorities are attempting to seek out people she may have had contact with outside the hospital and persuade them to undergo testing.
Johannesburg is located in Gauteng, South Africa's most populous province. "Urgent steps" have been taken to contain the disease there, according to the Gauteng Department of Health. On Tuesday, health officials announced that a local company had agreed to supply one of two medicines to treat XDR TB.
XDR TB has killed 52 of 53 patients who were infected with it in the eastern South Africa province of KwaZulu-Natal, officials reported earlier this month.
So far, it has been identified in at least 28 hospitals across the country, but that may not reflect the true breadth of the disease. The lack of adequate diagnostic facilities in poor areas means that an unknown number of cases may not be recorded.
The woman whose case was confirmed in Johannesburg became critically ill in March, according to accounts, and initially was admitted to the Sizwe hospital there, but then she continued treatment as an outpatient.
The diagnosis of extremely drug-resistant TB was made only last week. In spite of the efforts of the medical staff to persuade her, she refused to be readmitted at that time.
Reportedly, she agreed to go back to the hospital on Wednesday. Now, officials are scrambling to track down other people who may have been exposed to the deadly disease.
People with AIDS are especially vulnerable to tuberculosis because their immune systems are compromised. It is the largest killer of AIDS patients in Africa, and Africa is the only continent where TB rates are on the rise. More than 5.5 million people are HIV-positive in South Africa, according to official estimates.
Selfish? O, Beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster....
Otello à parte, esse blog é antes de mais nada um "log" com formatação fantástica, visto que o meu diário onde anotava e grudava notícias sempre se perdia...
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