Yesterday, Dr Karen, the head of Cape Town municipality's HIV, TB and sexually transmitted infections unit, Jennings expressing his feelings for the government's new policies for mixing tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS care called it as extremely challenging.

From the years the TB and HIV/AIDS care programs are being run separately but as many of the patients are suffering from both diseases simultaneously forced the government to join theses two programs under one roof.

Dr Jennings is attending the seventh annual meeting of the Consortium for AIDS and TB Epidemic, funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

She said, "Active case finding is feasible and acceptable, but there is still a gap - 35% (of the study participants) said no to voluntary counseling and testing (for HIV) and it is difficult to screen children."

In 2009, out 29526 new TB patients who have started their treatment in Cape Town, 83 percent of them had get themselves tested for HIV out of which 50 percent tested positive.

SA is having the highest number of people who are suffering from combined infection of HIV and TB, which accounts to be the half of the patients throughout the world.

Researchers found that around 8 percent of the households of TB patients had agreed for tests and half of them are suffering from the same while ten percent of them are suffering from HIV/AIDS.