Testing For TB in South Africa to Increase

Rapid test kits are being shipped to South Africa to increase testing for tuberculosis (TB).

Medical Services International Inc. (Edmonton, Canada) has begun to ship the kit, which is called VScan, to South Africa at the request of its distributor and as a result of thousands of infected people being sent back to their communities because of inadequate testing methods. VScan rapid test kit for TB is a TB test kit that measures only active TB. There are no false-positives with the VScan TB rapid test kits. Previous testing has shown that the VScan TB test kit has a sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 100%. These results substantially exceed the accuracy of any other existing TB tests.

Current testing--a standard smear sputum test--failed to diagnose the disease. Specialists have indicated that 60% of the TB cases in South Africa are smear-negative (not detected by a sputum test). The VScan TB rapid test kit can be used to diagnose smear-negative TB cases. Smear-negative TB is more common in people harboring human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

A report released by the Treatment Action Campaign said that South Africa not only had one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world but also one of the highest incidence rates for TB and this was increasing drastically as HIV epidemic worsened. Of the estimated nine million people who develop active TB every year, most still do not receive a laboratory confirmed diagnosis. TB is highly contagious.

The VScan rapid test kit is a single use, easy-to-use, test for the screening of HIV 1 and 2, hepatitis B and C, TB, dengue fever, malaria, west Nile fever, syphilis, and prostate cancer.

Existing TB tests routinely produce false-positives when a person has previously been vaccinated against TB using some of the vaccines available. This results in further testing that is expensive, stressful to the individual, and time-consuming.


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