Centre says WHO doesn’t approve of term total drug resistant TB; docs say govt should focus on containing disease.
The Centre has slammed the Hinduja Hospital for spreading panic by terming the drug-resistant tuberculosis as total drug resistant (TDR-TB), saying the term is not approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Centre also said the Hinduja Hospital was not accredited by them.
According to the press release issued by the Centre, the total drug resistant-TB is non-standardised and is misleading and testing for resistance beyond extreme drug resistant TB (XDR-TB) is not advocated by the WHO. Poor clinical response to treatment has not yet been correlated with diagnosis of drug resistant TB without laboratory conformation from accredited labs, it said.
Doctors, however, maintain that they have seen mutating strain of tuberculosis bacilli and the drug-resistant strain has only gotten worse.
Dr Jehangir Sorabjee, consulting physician at the Bombay Hospital, said: “When any doctor from the private or public sector comes up with data that has some serious health impact for the community or the country at large, they should immediately join hands with concerned agencies (health officials) to work together in preventing the spread of a contagious disease like TB.”
According to the press release, the Hinduja Hospital laboratory is not accredited by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme for culture and sensitivity test for second line drugs to diagnose exteme drug resistant (XDR)/Total Drug Resistant (TDR) cases. It is only accredited for conducting Drug Susceptibility Testing (DST) by liquid culture and sensitivity for first line drug only.
While the Centre says that the Hinduja hospital lab is not accredited, city hospitals continue to send samples for TB testing to the same laboratory. “I have seen some drug resistant tuberculosis patients and the situation is alarming. Action needs to be taken immediately,” Dr Sorabjee said.
Dr Zarir Udwadia, chest physician who did the TDR-TB study at the Hinduja Hospital, said: “There are 27 WHO-designated Intermediate Reference National Labs in the country. Hinduja lab is one of them. We expect the government authorities to admit that a decade of neglect of MDR-TB patients has resulted in TDR-TB.”
Experts say that calling the resistant strain of TB bacilli as extensive drug resistant tuberculosis or total drug resistant tuberculosis doesn’t take away the merit of the seriousness of the issue. “Any form of tuberculosis is contagious and with time the bacilli is becoming more and more resistant to drugs. It will be unfortunate if we sit and argue on what term is right and what is not.”
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