The Department of Health has been urged to step up its programmes to end Tuberculosis (TB) by the year 2030.
According to research by the Department, TB is ranked as the number one killer illness globally, with 1.5 million people who die every year from the disease.
In South Africa at least 450 new cases are recorded every three months, of these 63 percent also live with HIV.
TB survivor and Ambassador Dr Zolelwa Sifumba was diagnosed with Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in 2012, the 27 year old says treatment for this type of TB has serious side effects which is the reason why many patients cannot complete the treatment.
She believes if the new TB drug called Bedaquiline was made easily accessible to every patient, more people would recover.
Sifumba said, “Going to the clinic every single day disrupting life and school. You get there you take about 20 pills for MDR and an injection. The pills make you nauseated, give you diarrhea, joint pain and the injection also causes pain to a point where you can’t walk.
“It stopped me from going to school we can treat people till we are blue to the face but if we don’t help them through the treatment till completion we will be wasting our time.”
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