Monday, March 24, 2008

Port Elizabeth Makes it to the Cover of the New York Times!

....oh...wait.

PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa — The Jose Pearson TB Hospital here is like a prison for the sick. It is encircled by three fences topped with coils of razor wire to keep patients infected with lethal strains of tuberculosis from escaping.

But at Christmastime and again around Easter, dozens of them cut holes in the fences, slipped through electrified wires or pushed through the gates in a desperate bid to spend the holidays with their families. Patients have been tracked down and forced to return; the hospital has quadrupled the number of guards. Many patients fear they will get out of here only in a coffin.

“We’re being held here like prisoners, but we didn’t commit a crime,” Siyasanga Lukas, 20, who has been here since 2006, said before escaping last week. “I’ve seen people die and die and die. The only discharge you get from this place is to the mortuary.”


The article is about balancing the rights of the sick vs, the rights of the community when dealing with diseases as deadly as extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis

It's easy to be critical of the way South Africa is handling the disease, but I wonder what the American government would do, today, if people started dropping like flies from a highly infectious disease? From a public health perspective, quarantining the sick makes sense. But for the people quarantined, its another kind of hell.

1 comment:

josh said...

the U.S. quarantines people who refuse to comply with TB medication, too. Just not usually in colonies behind fences.