Tackling TB in the city

Health officials in India have been galvanized into action after receiving a letter from industrialist Adi Godrej listing his concerns over the spread of tuberculosis (TB) in Bombay. The letter, written in January 2014 when the Congress was in power was addressed to Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi and forwarded to then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. It has now been brought to the notice of the Narendra Modi led government, mentions Sunday Mumbai Mirror (SMM) in its issue of August 3, 2014.
Godrej penned this letter after a conversation with Dr Nerges Mistry of The Foundation for Medical Research which is concerned about the spread of TB in the city and how difficult it is to contain it. In 2012, the world had taken note of the problem with the sensational disclosure on Totally Drug Resistant TB (TDR-TB) cases by Dr Zarir F. Udwadia, chest physician with the P. D. Hinduja Hospital. The government later rejected Udwadia’s findings, objecting to his nomenclature of the cases being TDR-TB when they were actually Extra-extremely Drug Resistant.

Adi Godrej: concerned over spread of TB

"Patients often do not complete the prescribed fist-line course of medicines. So, by the time they are referred to government hospitals, they are already drug resistant,” a doctor told SMM on conditions of anonymity. According to the BMC’s figures, the number of multi-drug resistant cases in the city has been rising and of the 16,825 suspected patients, 5,994 were detected with TB between January 2013 and January 2014. However, the figures are much higher as people being treated at private clinics may not figure in the list, which is why Godrej is keen that the menace be tackled.
"We have seen significant changes in the fight against TB after Godrej’s letter. There is a new urgency and the focus on identification and treatment of TB is now sharper,” Dr Dipesh Reddy, who is with the Observer Research Foundation, informed SMM.