At St Peter TB Specialized Hospital, high in the mountains of Entoto, north of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, a masked Johannes is suffering from multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and has spent the last month at the hospital.
While the doctors are glad he is receiving treatment, they are also worried – Johannes is a bus conductor in heavily populated Addis Ababa, so there is no telling how many people he could have infected before seeking treatment. Many are unlikely to be diagnosed and treated in time to prevent further infections.
"Diagnosis and treatment of MDR-TB remains a challenge; so far we have only two centres in Addis Ababa that can do the culture and drug sensitivity testing required," Diriba Agegnehu, TB/HIV programme officer for the UN World Health Organization (WHO) in Ethiopia, told IRIN/PlusNews.
"Breaking the transmission cycle is key to ending MDR-TB, so we need to move fast," he added.
Ethiopia, which ranks seventh on WHO's list of 22 high burden TB countries globally, is one of three countries in Africa with more than 5,000 estimated new MDR-TB infections annually. Of these, 1.6 percent of new cases and 11.8 percent of re-treatment cases are MDR-TB.
Treatment
So far, St Peter is the only facility able to treat MDR-TB in the country.
"We are treating 89 patients, but we have a waiting list of 170 patients," said Abdusamed Adem, director of medical services at the TB hospital. "We urgently need to open new centres."
More than 100 diagnosed MDR-TB patients have died while on the treatment waiting list. Having diagnosed 390 cases of the disease outside the capital, the Ethiopian government is now racing to build testing and treatment centres in several of administrative regions.
http://www.ethiopianreview.com/articles/31952
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