Patients With Drug Resistant TB Escape Confinement
Pastor Dale Morgan
With Drug Resistant TB Escape Confinement*
The Associated Press
Tuesday, December 18, 2007; 2:45 PM
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Forty nine highly infectious tuberculosis
patients cut through wire fencing and broke out of a hospital isolation
unit, apparently because they wanted to spend Christmas with their families.
The mass escape highlights the problems faced by South Africa as it
struggles to cope with an epidemic of virtually incurable TB that feeds
off the AIDS virus and kills most of its victims. South Africa has an
estimated 5.4 million people living with the AIDS virus.
There have been around 400 confirmed cases of the incurable strain known
as XDR-TB, or extremely drug resistant TB. But activists say the actual
number is probably much larger, because testing methods are not
sophisticated enough to detect the new strain and many people die before
they can be diagnosed.
Eastern Cape authorities said Tuesday they were still searching for 29
TB patients who escaped last week from the Jose Pearson Hospital near
the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, the South African Press Association
said. Twenty had turned themselves in following appeals, and authorities
said they hoped more would follow suit.
A spokesman for the department, Siyanda Manana, said the 49 patients _
all with multidrug resistant and extremely drug resistant TB _ had
escaped through holes they cut through the hospital's perimeter fences.
Notices to return, issued by the state attorney's office, were delivered
to the patients' homes.
"So far 20 have returned; we are expecting more to come back soon," said
Manana.
Although forced confinement of patients violates most medical ethics,
authorities say they have no choice but to put the wider public good
above individual rights. Confinement for XDR-TB is at least six months.