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INLSA<\/p>\n
The KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-Rith) was officially opened yesterday. The University of KZN and the US-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute are the founding partners of the facility, on the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine campus.<\/p>\n
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The country was counting on the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-Rith) to produce new drugs and a new generation of local scientists to arrest its high disease burden. <\/p>\n
These were the sentiments of Health Minster Aaron Motsoaledi yesterday, speaking at the official opening of the eight-storey R346 million research centre, on the campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal\u2019s (UKZN) Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine. <\/p>\n
UKZN and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute are the research centre\u2019s founding partners. <\/p>\n
For emphasis, Motsoaledi cited a 2011 World Health Organisation report, which said the TB prevalence was 800 per 100 000 people, \u201caccompanied by a high mortality rate\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Africa is among 22 countries in the world responsible for 80 percent [of cases of TB] in the world,\u201d Motsoaledi said. <\/p>\n
Seventeen percent of KZN\u2019s population was HIV-positive, and 80 percent of adults infected with TB also had HIV, according to statistics issued by K-Rith. <\/p>\n
The province is frequently referred to as the epicentre of the pandemic. <\/p>\n
Just over six years ago, an outbreak of XDR-TB (extensively drug-resistant TB) in Tugela Ferry killed 52 of 53 patients in a hospital there. <\/p>\n
At the time there were only 347 cases of XDR-TB worldwide. <\/p>\n
K-Rith\u2019s mission is two-fold: to discover new tools in the treatment of the diseases in Durban and worldwide, and to train the next generation of TB and HIV research scientists. <\/p>\n
Motsoaledi went on to say that the drugs now being used to treat TB were \u201cold\u201d. <\/p>\n
The Mercury recently quoted K-Rith director Prof William Bishai as saying that no new drugs had been developed to treat the disease since 1967. <\/p>\n
Also, for a long time, the country had been a destination for researchers from abroad, but the development of young scientists now had to be \u201cfast tracked\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have [good scientists] but they are old already,\u201d Motsoaledi teased. <\/p>\n
He twice thanked the institute for its \u201cgenerous contribution\u201d to K-Rith. <\/p>\n
UKZN vice-chancellor Prof Malegapuru Makgoba called K-Rith a \u201csocial conscience investment of the highest order\u201d. <\/p>\n
Professor Robert Tjian, president of the institute, said that K-Rith was its first research facility built outside of the US. <\/p>\n
This was to fight the \u201ctwin scourges\u201d of TB and HIV closest to the patients who needed it most. <\/p>\n
Tjian added that K-Rith sought to yield better ways to diagnose, treat and manage the diseases. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INLSA The KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-Rith) was officially opened yesterday. The University of KZN and the US-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute are the founding partners of the facility, on the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine campus. The country was counting on the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-Rith) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-15454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}