Six South African miners isolated as TB scare grows

JOHANNESBURG - Six South African miners have been isolated after being diagnosed as having a virulent and drug resistant form of tuberculosis (XDR-TB) which has already killed 52 people in the country.
The men, all from the central Free State and employees of leading mining companies Gold Fields and Harmony, were suffering from extreme drug resistant tuberculosis, the SAPA news agency said.
"They are currently being kept in isolation," at hospitals in the Free State town of Welkom, provincial health department spokeswoman Gela Naude said.
"The necessary preparations are being made at the unit for the patients to be quarantined properly," she said.
A recent outbreak of drug resistant tuberculosis in South Africa`s AIDS-ravaged KwaZulu-Natal province saw 52 HIV-positive patients dying within an average of 25 days from the point when the resistant TB was first suspected.
At any given moment, about 330,000 South Africans have tuberculosis and about 6,000 have the multiple drug resistant variant.
A Johannesburg woman was last week put into isolation after she was detected with the highly contagious form of the disease.
XDR-TB is a virulent form of TB which is resistant to most -- if not all -- drugs used to treat it. People with HIV and AIDS are particularly susceptible.

09/19/2006 17:16 GMT