Urgency needed to contain outbreak of drug-resistant TB in PNG

Transcript

A communicable disease expert says urgent action is needed to try and stop what appears to be a unique drug-resistant form of tuberculosis on the Papua New Guinea island of Daru.

Brendan Crabb, the director of Australia's Burnet Institute, says it is possible a unique superbug may have developed and is spreading at a phenomenal rate, although further research is needed.

Professor Crabb says the PNG Government has a good emergency response plan, but the promised funding for it has not yet been delivered.

He told Jamie Tahana that authorities need to act quickly to contain its spread.

BRENDAN CRABB: The emergence of some drug-resistant TB in some very local areas of Papua New Guinea - one in particular: Daru, in the Western province - at a rate that we haven't seen before and certainly not in the absence of an HIV co-infection, which is known to drive epidemics of drug-resistant TB. So there's some very unique characteristics to this; evolving in the absence of HIV, and more worryingly, the number of multi-drug resistant cases in people who have never been treated for TB before is extraordinarily high and so the suspicion in those people is that they caught drug-resistant TB from someone else. So, person-to-person spread of multi-drug resistant TB, and those characteristics are actually quite unique when they're seen at the frequency we're seeing in Daru. So while it's a relatively small population -- 10 to 20,000 people -- this is an extraordinary outbreak.

JAMIE TAHANA: What's thought to be behind this? How does such a serious strain of tuberculosis break out in one particular community?

BC: Well the short answer is we don't know for certain and there's a need to do significant research around understanding this. But there's two potential factors: the first is the local conditions, ones of poverty, of a health system that's functioning sub-optimally, or poor housing, and of poor nutrition. But the concern in Daru, and particularly the characteristic of a high rate of person-to-person spread is suggestive -- not conclusive at this stage -- of a strain of tuberculosis that has acquired a greater capacity to spread from person-to-person. Traditionally, drug-resistant strains of TB are considered to be less 'fit', in inverted commas, than the non-drug resistant forms. They're drug resistant, which gives them an advantage of course, but they're poor growers and poor spreaders. The concern here is that may not be the case and we need to do some work to find out if there is indeed a super bug, for want of a better phrase.

JT: What needs to be done to contain this?

BC: That is a good question and one that the Papua New Guinea government, together with the Australian government and a number of partners, have been looking at very closely. The PNG Government's response has been excellent in terms of developing a plan specifically for Daru and also a broader plan for the country that everyone agrees is the right emergency response plan and they announced funding for that in the middle of last year. The concern is that that money has not yet found its way into the system. So that is a significant concern, you know, there's just an urgency here.