South Africa is moving towards decentralising the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) care to primary care level, but will continue to hospitalise those patients who are ill or infectious.

BCG vaccine, the only currently available vaccine against TB and despite its limitations, is still one of the most important weapons in the arsenal against TB in young children.

South Africa is paying exorbitantly high prices for drugs to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis, a new report by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has revealed.

Extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB has now spread to most parts of KwaZulu-Natal after being confined mostly to the Tugela Ferry area.

Countries with high numbers of people living with HIV, especially where access to antiretroviral treatment is patchy, are sitting on a drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) time bomb, which may have in some instances already exploded.

OPINION: A whirlybird is a wind-driven roof turbine. We'€™ve all seen them. They dot the roofs of expansive warehouses. They aid circulation in modern bourgeois apartments on Knysna'€™s Thesen Island. They sit on the smell-stacks of non-descript out-houses in our townships on the periphery of our cities. By Dalli Weyers.

TB is a difficult '€œbugger'€ making it tough for scientists to develop drugs, diagnostics and vaccines to control the epidemic.