In order to identify drug-resistant forms of TB, Manoon said hospitals nationwide had cooperated by sending TB germ samples from patients. "We have to speak the truth and look for a way to prevent the spread of the disease," he said. Last week, Dr Tawat Suntra-jarn, head of the Disease Control Department, insisted there were no cases of Thais infected with XDR-TB.īut Manoon claimed the Health Ministry did not pay enough attention to monitoring and preventing the spread of drug-resistant TB. Manoon's disclosure about the confirmed XDR-TB cases contradicted information from the ministry. Currently there is no treatment for XDR-TB. XDR-TB recently became world news after a law, unused for 44 years, was invoked to isolate a man in the United States last month. MDR-TB is resistant only to first-line drugs. The difference between patients with MDR-TB and XDR-TB is that the first group has more treatment options than the latter. He claimed the ministry monitored drug-resistant forms of TB, but only multi-drug-resistant MDR had been found.
However, Dr Mongkol na Songkhla, the public health minister, said he had not yet been informed of the XDR cases here. Treatment options for patients with XDR-TB are severely limited.
This definition means the TB strain is extremely drug-resistant, especially to first- and second-line drugs. Thailand has 13 confirmed cases of the dangerous and highly drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, according to the chairman of the Drug Resistant TB Research Fund.ĭr Manoon Leechawengwong said yesterday the fund, under the patronage of the Siriraj Foundation, started research into drug-resistant forms of TB in 2001 and had found 13 cases identified as XDR-TB.
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