Bid to combat TB launches
|Published
File photo: Luke MacGregor File photo: Luke MacGregor
Johannesburg - Government, mining stakeholders and partners have come together to launch a major campaign against tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa's mining sector, the Mine Health and Safety Council (MHSC) said on Friday.
MHSC spokesman Masanda Peter said these stakeholders behind the launch of the Masoyise iTB campaign were the departments of Health and of Mineral Resources and the four major mining unions, Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Solidarity and the United Association of South Africa (UASA), as well as the Chamber of Mines of South Africa.
Peter said a TB screening campaign, which would run over three years, “formed part of the broader national campaign announced by deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year on World TB Day on March 24”
He said it was critical to put an end to the country's TB epidemic, and all parties involved in the campaign would provide regular progress reports. Key to the campaign was the Chamber of Mine's role as “companies affiliated to the Chamber of Mines have agreed to play their part in this campaign by ensuring that every employee is screened and tested for TB each year, from 2016 to 2018,” said Peter.
As at the end of 2014, Chamber of Mines members employed around 84 percent of approximately 466 000 employees in the mining industry. Peter said many South African companies already provided comprehensive TB screening, testing, treatment and had contact tracing in place, all of “which are aligned with World Health Organisation (WHO) practices”.
Chamber of Mines President Mike Teke said: “This campaign will seek to take the work that companies already do further. Through this initiative, we will work with the Department of Mineral Resources to assist smaller companies in implementing screening and testing among employees.”
Teke said the Chamber of Mines would “ensure that screening and testing is extended also to contractors' employees and investigate implementing contact tracing to off-mine communities of employees”.
He said the chamber was currently involved in talks with the National Health Laboratory Services on “how access to TB and HIV diagnostics can be improved”.
AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY