Many medical experts say South Africa’s clinical study BEAT Tuberculosis has transformed the global treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis.
The clinical study started in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape. The aim was to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a new shortened treatment regimen for DR-TB.
This week, the study’s findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Clinical Health Research Unit at Wits University, Dr Francesca Conradie says, “In the olden day, when we treated patients with drug resistant TB, we treated them for 18 months. And the first six month of that treatment comprised of daily injections. Worst of all, that combination of medication only worked half of the time. So that’s 50 percent of patients were cured and in addition to that about half of our patients went deaf and lost their hearing and there were a lot of side effects for example nausea and vomiting it wasn’t’ very successful. But now we are able to treat our patients for only six months we see it in the numbers too this treatment cured just 90 percent patients.”
World TB Day | Awareness aims at tackling challenges of tuberculosis in SA
