March 23, 2000
SECTION: NEWS, DOCUMENTS & COMMENTARY
HEADLINE: Drug-Resistant TB Strain Noticed In Malawi
BYLINE: Raphael Tenthani,
Blantyre, Malawi (PANA) Malawian doctors have diagnosed at least six patients with a
drug resistant strain of the infectious tuberculosis disease, the National TB Programme
has announced.
The patients are suspected to have triggered the strain by wrongly using the Riffinah
anti-TB drug to treat venereal diseases, according to the programme's manager, Felix
Salaniponi.
He said some patients have been known to take the drug to cure ailments ranging from
AIDS to infertility and diarrhoea.
"Of course, I have known it to cure diarrhoea and other STDs but it has never been
medically proved to cure infertility and AIDS," Salaniponi told reporters.
The drug, commonly known as 'bazooka,' is mainly sourced from neighbouring Mozambique
but most of it finds its way to vendors from government hospitals.
Salaniponi said that due to the wrong use of the drug, those that had used it before
fail to get cured by it if they get a TB attack.
Worse was the threat such patients posed to healthy people because they had the
potential of spreading the incurable strain to three people each week, he added.
As a result, the programme had intensified its campaign against the ignorant use of TB
drugs.
Salaniponi said with the collaboration of the Pharmacy, Medicines and Poisons Board,
the programme would enlist the help of the police to confiscate all TB drugs being sold
illegally.
The number of TB cases in Malawi has risen from an average 5,000 a year in 1985 to
25,000 in 1999 amid reports that males in the 25 to 34 age bracket constitute 54 percent
of the patients. At least 8,000 people are dying from the disease in Malawi annually.