The departmental spokesperson, Tebogo Lekgethwane, says this is to make space for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) which is set to accommodate the Coronavirus (Covid-19) patients.

He says the decision was made after all XDR patients recovered and no new cases have been recorded in 2020.

He says since the establishment of the unit 20 years ago, a total of 110 XDR TB patients were diagnosed in the Province between a period of 2013 and 2017 due to improved diagnostic tests. Meanwhile, Dr Hannetjie Ferreira, who is the medical officer at the hospital. adds that the last eight patients to be diagnosed with the XDR were in the period of 2018 and 2019.

Ferreira says only two patients were diagnosed with XDR TB in 2019 and six in 2018.

“In 2012 the North West became the first province in the country to successfully cure an XDR TB patient in South Africa. The unit was the first in South Africa to initiate a patient on the new medicine regimen under the Bedaquiline Clinical Access Research Programme in March 2013 and introduced Delamanid in 2016,” Lekgethwane adds.

He says this led to an improved cure rate for XDR TB and a subsequent decline in community transmission. One of the last XDR patients to recover from the disease was a patient from Jouberton in Klerksdorp in the Matlosana area.

 OFM News