Durban to get world’€™s most advanced TB research centre

The world’€™s ‘€œmost advanced research centre’€ dedicated to tuberculosis and HIV research is going to be built at the University of KwaZulu-Natal within months.

Some R308-million has been set aside for the six-storey building and 10 years’€™ worth of research, according to an announcement made simultaneously in Washington and Durban yesterday (19 March).

KwaZulu-Natal is the epicentre of HIV infection in the world, while 58 health facilities in the province had recorded cases of the incurable extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB by mid-2007.

Scientists from the US and South Africa will lead the research programmes at the centre, which will also act as a training facility for African scientists.

‘€œWe want to be part of the brain gain, ‘€ explains the university’€™s vice-chancellor, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, one of the main drivers of the centre.

‘€œThis centre will enable us to make a gigantic leap forward in research. We would never have been able to do so without a massive injection of resources. We will be dealing with very dangerous, infectious organisms and who would want to work with such things without such safety facilities?’€ added Abdool Karim.

Two floors of the centre will be taken up by state-of-the-art Level 3 bio-safety laboratories that will enable scientists to work safely with highly dangerous drug-resistant TB bacteria. Only laboratories dealing with haemorraghic fevers (such as ebola) have a higher safety level.

The research aims of the centre will be three-fold, according to Professor Willem Sturm, medical school dean and interim director of the centre.

These are:

·                 The development of rapid tests to diagnose drug-resistant TB. Some newer tests are more rapid, but miss resistant strains or require too much high-tech equipment.

·                 Identifying the genetic characteristics of drug resistant strains of TB in an attempt to understand ‘€œwhat made TB more aggressive and resistant’€ over the past decade.

·                 Analysing people’€™s immune responses to tuberculosis, particularly among people infected with HIV.

·                 Studying recurrent tuberculosis in people with HIV to ascertain whether the patient has become reinfected with TB or whether latent TB in the patient has become reactivated.

Patient facilities at Church of Scotland and McCord Hospitals and Prince Cyril Zulu Clinic will also be improved as part of the research programme.

Construction begins in September and will change the face of the medical school, the centre is expected to be completed by the end of 2010.

 ‘€œOur cross-Atlantic partnership reflects a shared view that direct and substantial investment in basic, clinical, and transnational research in the heart of the pandemics of HIV and TB will yield significant discoveries that will alleviate the human suffering caused by these diseases,’€ said ‘€œThomas R. Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), which is the main donor.

Other funding comes from Lifelab and the university itself. ‘€“ Health-e News Service.

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  • healthe

    Health-e News is South Africa's dedicated health news service and home to OurHealth citizen journalism. Follow us on Twitter @HealtheNews

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