South Africa has one of the highest tuberculosis rates on the world. Adding to the dismal picture is that only 54% of the more than 500 000 people with TB were cured last year.

This is a worrying statistic as TB is a curable disease with a fairly simple regimen of drugs that need to be taken for six months.

Experts and national government agree that the TB rates are a massive problem that will only be addressed if the provinces show the political will to tackle the disease.

Head of TB in the national health department Dr Lindiwe Mvusi acknowledged last week that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg and that most TB cases were far advanced by the time they were detected.

This in turn meant that these ‘€œundetected’€ patients were infecting many others.

The National Department of Health have a good plan in place to tackle the epidemic, yet many of the provinces such as the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal (highest number of TB cases) are failing to make available the critical financial and human resources needed to stop the cycle of infection.

TB is a labour intensive disease to manage, it places a huge burden on human resources in the health system that are already stretched to its maximum.

Pure logic says that it would make sense to pour resources into decreasing the number of TB patients, by ensuring they are cured first time. These patients would no longer spread the disease. This in turn would dramatically decrease the burden on the state health system, allowing workers to better care for those who have chronic diseases such a HIV/AIDS, hypertension, diabetes and cancer.

We need to ask the question how Mozambique, Tanzania and Sudan, countries that are much poorer in all respects, have managed to keep their TB rates rock bottom.

The sad fact is that while politicians in the provinces are dilly-dallying hundreds of adults and children are dying needlessly from a curable disease.

This article appeared in The Star on Wednesday, 30 March 2005

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