For the first time in India, 12 people have been detected with totally drug-resistant lung tuberculosis (TDR-TB), a condition in which patients do not respond to any TB medication and for which the mortality rate is 100 percent.
Doctors, at PD Hinduja Hospital in Mahim, treating these patients say the absolute resistance is a result of the patients being prescribed wrong antibiotics.
“A TB patient comes in contact with at least 10 to 15 people on average, thus the strain is likely to spread,” said Dr Zarir F Udwadia, consultant physician at PD Hinduja Hospital, who coauthored a paper on TDR-TB that was published in the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases Advance Access.
The Hinduja hospital’s laboratory has been certified by the World Health Organization (WHO) to test TB patients for drug resistance.
While Iran first reported TDRTB cases three years ago, India seems to be only the second country to report this deadly form of the disease. TDR-TB is the result of the latest mutation of the bacilli after Multi-Drug-Resistant TB (MDR-TB ) and Extremely Drug-Resistant TB (XDR-TB ) were diagnozed earlier.
Source: Health Newstrack, India