The Monitor

Newspaper Review by: ponder

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The Monitor news paper in Uganda is the first Ugandan news paper to go on line and it is the leading independent

newspaper in the country.
It can be accessed on the internet on www.monitor.co.ug and has been publishing contradicting articles that have placed it at longer heads with the uganda government for some time and this led its founders who are seasoned journalists to sell off most of their share holdings to the public.
The Aghakhan Groups Daily Nation has a big stake in this print media company because they own majority shares. many articles and features about Uganda have been published in this news paper. If you peruse the features, you will find the mind boggling feature about the state of tuberclosis infection in Uganda:
Drug resistant tuberculosis on the rise in Uganda
KAKAIRE A. KIRUNDA
While drug susceptible TB can be cured by antibiotics within six to eight months, Multi Drug Resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) requires more powerful and expensive drugs taken for more than two years, and often with adverse side effects. Yet only 50 percent of patients who contract MDR-TB get cured
When volunteers become tired of helping tuberculosis patients take their drugs on time and complete the treatment course, there is cause for worry. This is what is happening as recent surveys have indicated in some parts of Uganda. This has led to the misuse of tuberculosis drugs, making them ineffective in treating the disease, leading to the emergence of Multi Drug Resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is becoming a serious global public health concern.
Ineffectual national control programmes, inadequate drug supply and availability of anti-tuberculosis medications over the counter in several affected countries have also been cited for as a cause of the problem.
"Multi-Drug Resistant TB, is TB which is a man-made disease. This is our fault and patients'' fault as well. All together we made this disease," Voice Of Amrerica in March quoted Dr. Alicja Dziewiecki of the South African based Sizwe Tropical Diseases Hospital.
According to WHO, multi drug-resistant TB is a specific form of drug-resistant TB. It occurs when the TB bacteria are resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most powerful anti-TB drugs.
In Uganda, the latest available data (2005) on TB shows that of all the reported cases reported by then, 0.5 percent was of the Multi Drug Resistant type. None-the-less, three months of repeated efforts to get hold of key officials of the National TB Partnership and the Focal TB person at the Ministry of Health to establish the magnitude of the problem and discuss the implications have proved futile. Yet improving access to TB information is one of the hallmarks of the National Stop TB Strategy.
However, a 2005 report published by the Wellcome Trust on a pilot project at the TB ward in Mulago hospital to determine the extent of MDR TB offers some insight.
With backing from the Wellcome Trust and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, project leader Jerrold Ellner and his colleagues at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, teamed up with researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and scientists in Uganda.
This followed the discovery that some patients receiving treatment for TB were not responding to conventional drugs. At the end of the study initial results suggested that around 12 percent of patients who had previously received treatment had developed multidrug-resistant TB.
You can visit the website to learn more about this growing pandemic in Uganda today

Published: July 14, 2007

Relevant Links:

http://www.monitor.co.ug/socpol/socpol07041.php

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0 Ratings Saturday, July 14, 2007
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Innocent Twinomugisha

article on tuberclosis in Uganda

It is an issue that must be adrressed by the authorities in Uganda and WHO