New TB test kit comes to Kenya in 3 months

• Equipment produces results as you wait instead of the six weeks patients had to endure in the past

The latest tuberculosis testing technology, which confirms results as you wait, will be available in Kenya in the next three months.

The computer-enabled equipment produces results in 100 minutes instead of the six weeks the current technology requires.

Endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in December, the test can also detect drug resistance to TB, which is on the increase in the country.

Ms Judy Waguma of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said the first kits would be available at the organisation’s clinics in Kibera, Homa Bay and Mathare.

The government also plans to bring in more test machines before the end of the year.

Each machine costs about Sh1.38 million but WHO has promised to negotiate a lower price for low and middle-income countries like Kenya.

Kenya ranks 13th on the list of 22 high-burden TB countries in the world and has the fifth highest burden in Africa. According to WHO’s Global TB Report 2009, Kenya had approximately more than 132,000 new TB cases and an incidence rate of 142 new cases per 100,000 population.

Dr Joseph Sitienei, the head of Kenya’s Division of Leprosy, TB and Lung Diseases, said by last year there were 30 cases of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) which have been cured — 16 at two public health facilities, and 14 by the MSF.

So far, the country has identified about 552 MDR-TB cases which have been confirmed, but only 112 are on treatment programmes at Kenyatta National Hospital, Moi Referral and Training Hospital in Eldoret, the MSF facility in Mathare, Nairobi, and at Homa Bay in Nyanza.

According to MSF, the cost of some of the medicines required to treat drug resistance TB has increased 800-fold in the last decade despite being old drugs with serious side effects.

“However, these are the only medicines that exist today that can tackle drug resistance TB. Our reports shows that these drugs are riddled with persistent supply and price problems that must be urgently addressed,” says Dr Tido von Schoen-Angerer of MSF.

A 24-month drug resistant treatment regimen can cost as much as Sh750,000 for a patient, 470 times more than the cost of curing standard, drug-sensitive TB.

But the TB solution may lie with 64 infants from Siaya in Nyanza participating in Phase II of tuberculosis vaccine clinical trials.

Dr Grace Kiringa, the study coordinator said they were evaluating the safety of a vaccine called AERAS-402/Crucell Ad35.

“In previous studies done on healthy adults, adults living with HIV and on healthy infants, no serious adverse events have been reported. And so, to the best of our knowledge, the vaccine is safe. This is extremely promising and critical to finding a new vaccine that will help put an end to the TB epidemic,” she told Africa Science News Service recently.