TUBERCULOSIS: Failure to integrate AIDS and Tbc diagnostic centers

DURBAN, 3 June 2010 (PLUSNEWS) - A consortium of AIDS organizations has given the South African government three months to deliver on promises to integrate TB and HIV services. A local AIDS lobby group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), international medical charity Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF), and the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA), a regional partnership of non-governmental organisations, were among civil society groups that issued the deadline at the South African TB Conference in the port city of Durban. MSF spokesperson Lesley Odendal called the three-month deadline "generous" because TB and HIV care should have been integrated by 1 April 2010, according to newly adopted national antiretroviral (ARV) treatment guidelines, but the Department of Health has yet to issue an implemention plan. "Patients are still going to different sites, and healthcare workers still have not been trained on new guidelines," said TAC Deputy Secretary General Lihle Dlamini. "One patient who has both diseases should be seen by one healthcare worker with one file." Dlamini noted that integrating TB and HIV care would lead to earlier diagnosis of TB, especially strains of the disease occurring outside the lungs, which are common in co-infected patients. It would also help health workers become more familiar with the potentially severe interactions between antiretroviral (ARV) and TB drugs. Krista Dong, of the Integration of TB in Education & Care for HIV/AIDS (iTEACH) Programme, based at Edendale Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal Province, said proper training of healthcare workers was crucial. She cited recent research by Health Systems Trust, a non-profit health research organization, which found that nurses' knowledge of potentially dangerous HIV and TB drug interactions continued to be problematic, even with training.