The Jose Pearson TB hospital in Port Elizabeth has beefed up its security measures after the patients, 17 men and five women aged between 18 and 42, were arrested for throwing rocks at security guards and vandalising equipment. The patients were currently housed in an isolated facility in the hospital after they were returned by court and police on Thursday for fears of their highly infectious diseases.
Patients complained that the Jose Pearson TB Hospital 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.
The public health threat from drug-resistant TB is grave. The disease spreads through the air when patients cough and sneeze. It is resistant to the most effective drugs. In South Africa, these resistant strains of tuberculosis have multiplied and attacked those with weakened immune systems due to AIDS.
The extensively drug-resistant TB has rapidly emerged as a global threat to public health. Hospitals have no choice but to house the patients in an isolated facility in the hospital. The hospital houses more than 300 patients.
Some 563 people were confirmed with extensively drug-resistant TB last year in South Africa and started on treatment, compared with only 20 cases in the United States from 2000 through 2006. A third of those patients in South Africa died in 2007; more than 300 remain in hospitals.
