‘I can’t wait for a new life’
Cape Town - Khayelitsha’s Zoliswa Mkiva, 32, is the third patient in the township to be cured of extreme drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB).
Zoliswa Mkiva has been cured of MDR TB.
“I am ecstatic. I am better. I can’t wait for a new life,” she said.
The mother of one took her last dose of treatment on Friday, was declared cured of XDR TB and discharged from the Nolungile Clinic.
Khayelitsha has one of the highest rates of TB and HIV in the world. In response, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders started a pilot project with the City of Cape Town and province in 2007 to provide treatment to drug-resistant TB patients at primary care level.
Mkiva was diagnosed with pre-XDR TB in February last year and never believed she would be cured. “I thought this was the end of the road for me,” she said.
XDR TB is “a virulent and virtually untreatable form of TB” caused by bacteria that has become resistant to most anti-TB drugs, according to the South African Medical Research Council.
Mkiva was admitted to the Lizo Nobanda TB Care Centre and joined the pilot study.
She completed a two-year period of treatment last week and became the third Khayelitsha resident to officially beat the disease after it was found that she had maintained negative sputum cultures for 20 months.
Earlier this year, Phumeza Tisile, 23, and Aviwe Jacobs, 19, were also declared cured of XDR TB after they participated in the pilot study and underwent similar extensive treatment at the Zakhele Clinic in Khayelitsha.
The results of the study are to be combined with similar studies worldwide.
Source: IOL
