On World TB Day on Monday, 24 March 2025, South Africans were once again reminded that the fight against the disease was far from over with numerous factors contributing to its continued presence. As part of the fight, the University of Western Cape’s School of Pharmacy, alongside the Faculty of Natural Sciences, hosted a TB Awareness event where students participated, providing screening and educating the campus community about treatment.

Senior lecturer, Dr Erica Kapp, said until the COVID pandemic, South Africa was making good progress in fighting TB.

“The TB campaigns fell flat for a year, and then we had to make a renewed effort to get (the fight against) TB back on track. So, in South Africa, we’re still seeing hundreds of thousands of infections every year,” she said.

In South Africa, TB remains the country’s leading health challenge, with 270 000 people estimated to be infected each year and 56 000 dying annually. Dr Kapp said in the Cape Town metro, and adjacent areas, there was a particularly high infection rate for TB.

Asked why, she said: “It’s still a difficult disease to treat. If you have TB, or you’re diagnosed with TB, you have to take four different medicines. And that’s just standard TB. You have to take four different medicines for six months and people take it, there are side-effects and they stop taking it and then it comes back.

“People live in very close proximity. That’s how TB distributes. There’s food insecurity, people’s immune systems are bad and HIV makes it worse.”

Dr Kapp said the outreach campaign on campus was because many students lived in communities with high TB infection rates.

“It’s important to have it here so that people can see that TB is still a thing (and) it's treatable. We have some screening stations so that people can screen. If you have a few symptoms, you should go to the clinic to have yourself tested,” she said.

Prof Admire Dube explained that several advances were made in the fight against TB.

“Especially after COVID, we’ve seen an increase in the number of TB cases around the world. So now we just have to have more awareness; how you can prevent it but also we need to have more research into new ways of treating TB,” said Prof Dube.

“For example, there is research into immune therapies because there’s a lot of resistance with the (current) drugs, so new ways of treating TB are always welcome.”

Prof Dube is an Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacy and holds the position of Deputy Dean for Learning and Teaching for the Faculty of Natural Sciences. He specialises in the formulation of medicines and the development of new drug delivery systems for infectious diseases.

He said there was research that looked into shorter treatments, for instance, two months or four months instead of the six months that is currently in place.

Postgraduate Pharmacy student Brenda Knipe who, as part of her mini-thesis, is looking at TB medication access in the private sector, said some of her findings were interesting, with many pharmacists expressing difficulty in getting drug stock.