Posted on 03/24/2008 9:50:46 PM PDT by neverdem
PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa — The Jose Pearson TB Hospital here is like a prison for the sick. It is encircled by three fences topped with coils of razor wire to keep patients infected with lethal strains of tuberculosis from escaping.
But at Christmastime and again around Easter, dozens of them cut holes in the fences, slipped through electrified wires or pushed through the gates in a desperate bid to spend the holidays with their families. Patients have been tracked down and forced to return; the hospital has quadrupled the number of guards. Many patients fear they will get out of here only in a coffin.
“We’re being held here like prisoners, but we didn’t commit a crime,” Siyasanga Lukas, 20, who has been here since 2006, said before escaping last week. “I’ve seen people die and die and die. The only discharge you get from this place is to the mortuary.”
Struggling to contain a dangerous epidemic of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, known as XDR-TB, the South African government’s policy is to hospitalize those unlucky enough to have the disease until they are no longer infectious. Hospitals in two of the three provinces with the most cases — here in the Eastern Cape, as well as in the Western Cape — have sought court orders to compel the return of runaways.
The public health threat is grave. The disease spreads through the air when patients cough and sneeze. It is resistant to the most effective drugs. And in South Africa, where these resistant strains of tuberculosis...
--snip--
As extensively drug-resistant TB rapidly emerges as a global threat to public health — one found in 45 countries — South Africa is grappling with a sticky ethical problem: how to balance the liberty of individual patients against the need to protect society...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Such a sad and dangerous situation. Prayers for the afflicted.
Hmmm, tough call on those illegals: Treat or deport? Deport or treat?
>>Deport or treat?
Quarantine. Treat it as biological warfare.
I was wondering when someone was going to tie in illigal immigration to this. Far more people come to the US to visit then immigrate here. I’m sure that includes many South Africans.
We can’t test every single visitor to the US. This new TB will get here and we will have to deal with it. I hate it with all my heart but South Africa might be right here.
If that’s so, that it will definitely get here, then the CDC should be making plans now for how to deal with it. It seems cruel to isolate people, but if something is both deadly and highly contagious, the government has to do it. That has always been the case in the past with epidemics and plagues, sometimes those ‘escaping’ even being shot on sight, martial law imposed, curfews, etc.
However, I would hope places could be arranged that aren’t like hospital/prisons, but have recreation room, library, internet, etc, and maybe some sort of sitting areas with plexiglass screens or something so family and friends can visit anytime and at least talk if not touch.
There used to be TB sanitariums all over the country, one where I used to live was operational into the 1920’s and now is a crumbling, moss-covered ruin abandoned in a park. Who ever thought such places would be needed again?
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