TB Thrives Among South Africa’s HIV-Positive Population

JIM LEHRER:

Next tonight, the second story in our series from South Africa, this one about the resurgence of tuberculosis.

A study released today by the World Health Organization found that 1 out of every 4 tuberculosis deaths is HIV-related, twice as many previously recognized. Ray Suarez has our report on how that very problem is playing out in South Africa.

RAY SUAREZ:

Every morning, the scene is the same. Patients get into a long line to wait hours for tuberculosis screening at this specially designed clinic in Durban, South Africa.

Seven hundred patients will pass through these doors on an average day. The Prince Cyril Zulu Centre handles four times as many patients today as it did 10 years ago.

Tuberculosis, or TB, is now a leading cause of death in South Africa. In fact, estimates are that, every hour, 13 South Africans will die from TB.

And the patient profile has changed, too. Tuberculosis, once a disease of older men, has a new face. The reason: the HIV virus.

DR. SALIM KARIM, AIDS-TB expert: HIV has created a new dynamic in the TB epidemic. To start with, the patients who have both T.B. and HIV are younger, they tend to be more female than previously, and they tend to be sicker.

RAY SUAREZ:

HIV has created a population of immune-depressed host bodies. More than 7 million South Africans are HIV-positive, a perfect lab of sorts for the TB bacteria to flourish. TB is an old killer given new life by the onslaught of the HIV virus.

Professor Salim Karim is director of CAPRISA, the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa.

DR. SALIM KARIM:

HIV is potentiating the TB epidemic, so that we have these terrible twins of HIV and TB tracking together. And TB is the single most common presenting illness in AIDS, so this means in South Africa somewhere around 70 percent or so of patients who are presenting with tuberculosis have HIV infection.