David Njagi
1 July 2009
Nairobi — About 500 people have the difficulty to treat tuberculosis strain called Multiple Drug Resistant (MDR) TB, majority of whom are not in any kind of treatment programme.
Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) chief executive officer, Dr Jotham Micheni, says 500 cases of MDR TB patients have been confirmed in the country, but only 332 of these are registered with the National TB Control Programme (NTCP).
Out of these, says Dr Micheni, only 70 are on treatment, which costs a single patient an average of Sh1.5 million.
"We are confirming today that Kenya has a disease burden of 500 MDR TB patients," said Dr Micheni during the official opening of the KNH open day last week. "However, only 332 of them are registered with the NTCP." The bad news comes amid fears that an even deadlier strain of the disease, Extremely Drug Resistant (XDR) TB is also spreading in the county.
But KNH maintains that the institution has put in place World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended isolation procedures to prevent further spread of the deadly strain.
Disease
The Department of Respiratory and Infectious Diseases' (DRID) says the KNH MDR TB isolation facility, which has so far sucked in some Sh45 million, will be ready for use as sometimes this month.
According to the head of DRID, Dr H.M. Irimu, the isolation facility will only accommodate 15 MDR patients, although the management admits that KNH is currently shouldering a heavy disease burden following a collapsed national referral system.
"We expect the facility to be ready later this month at a cost of Sh50 million," said Dr Irimu. "We will be training provincial medical personnel on how to handle these cases so that we can reduce the number of people who are coming to KNH from the district and provincial levels for treatment."
Clinicians say treatment of patients with MDR TB even under optimized conditions, will succeed in barely more than half of the cases due to insufficient research and development on new drugs.
According to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a humanitarian health organisation, difficulties in treating of MDR TB, accelerates the rate at which a patient develops XDR TB, especially for people co-infected with HIV.
At the moment, KNH is said to have a hospital capacity of 1,800 beds but all of these are already strained by over 2,500 patients who are currently admitted into the national hospital.
By WHO standards, KNH would need an annual budget of Sh6 billion to attend to the more than 600,000 inpatients and some more 600,000 outpatients who call at the facility every year.
"For now the government only subsidizes payments for staff salaries and allowances," said Dr Micheni. Tuberculosis (TB) is an infection, primarily in the lungs, caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is spread from person to person by breathing infected air during close contact.
TB can remain in an inactive state for years without causing symptoms or spreading to other people.
When the immune system of a patient with dormant TB is weakened, the TB can become active and cause infection in the lungs or other parts of the body.
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