St Luke’s Hospice has been managing the Lizo Nobanda DR-TB Facility in Khayelitsha since May 2013, in partnership with the Western Cape Government Department of Health which provides most of the funding to run the facility, City of Cape Town (Health) which provides the building and Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) which is responsible for the treatment of the patients.
It has a staff component of 13 members consisting of a facility manager who is a professional nurse, another professional nurse, two enrolled nurses and a locum enrolled nurse, four carers, two general assistants, one clerk and one auxiliary social worker.
The patients at the Centre receive the treatment called Linezolid and Bedaquiline (BDQ), a famous new TB Drugs not yet available in SA. It is imported and used by MSF to treat XDR TB. Thus far 3 patients have been cured of XDR TB.
The patients are all from Khayelitsha and are treated in their own community which is considered to be more ideal than admissions to the TB hospitals, as the patients can maintain their relationships with their relatives. Patients with DR-TB are often rejected by their family members due to the fear associated with the disease. The auxiliary social worker working at Lizo Nobanda, works with these family members in order to allay their fears and in preparing them to receive these patients back into their homes.
Patients are admitted to this facility for:
treatment initiation: MDR, XDR, Pre XDR; the screening of all Bedaquiline patients; the monitoring of all bloods and the doing of tests for baseline purposes; social reasons such as unemployment, absence of family members and/or poverty; palliative care for DR-TB patients with cancer or for terminally ill DR-TB patients; co-morbidity such as HIV, hypertension, diabetes, epilepsy and the management of the side–effects of the medication.
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