'We're still seeing hundreds of thousands of TB infections'

University of Western Cape’s School of Pharmacy and Faculty of Natural Sciences hosted a TB Awareness event last week.

The event, hosted on World TB Day, Monday March 24, saw students providing screening and educating others about the infectious disease at the main campus in Bellville. 

Senior lecturer at the School of Pharmacy, Dr Erica Kapp, said the country was making good progress in fighting TB until the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The TB campaigns fell flat for a year, and then we had to make a renewed effort to get the fight against TB back on track. So, in South Africa, we’re still seeing hundreds of thousands of infections every year,” she said.

Dr Kapp said the outreach campaign on campus was because many students lived in communities with high TB infection rates.

“People live in very close proximity. That’s how TB distributes. There’s food insecurity, people’s immune systems are bad, and HIV makes it worse,” she added.

Prof Admire Dube, the deputy dean for learning and teaching for the Faculty of Natural Sciences, said: “We just have to have more awareness; how you can prevent it, but also we need to have more research into new ways of treating TB. For example, there is research into immune therapies because there’s a lot of resistance with the (current) drugs, so new ways of treating TB are always welcome.”