journalistsagainsttb

MDR-TB in India: Past the Tipping Point Now?

Zarir F. Udwadia
MD, FRCP (London), FCCP (USA), Consultant Physician
Hinduja Hospital & Research Center, Breach Candy Hospital, Mumbai

Dr Zarir F. Udwadia, well-known chest physician of India has shared with JATB, this insightful, disturbing article on MDR-TB in India.  JATB thanks him for this and is honoured to publish it, because it cannot be emphasized enough that MDR-TB is now verging on an emergency and needs action. It is particularly disturbing that this comes on a day when we hear our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has announced drastic cuts on health spends in the country.  Read on…

“The MDR situation in this country has been aggravated by what I would call “public policy paralysis.”7 The Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) for several decades sat by, paralysed, failing to appreciate the scale and severity of the unfolding MDR-TB crisis. So seduced were they by the successes of DOTS in treating sensitive TB that they presumed this would prevent drug-resistant TB as well.” – Excerpt from the article…

GP-ORF_TB_Ch 4-1

Views expressed are by the author.

Bharathi Ghanashyam

Each of these pictures tell stories of their own. Using descriptions for them will be to undermine the moods they evoke in the reader/viewer. However, it is important to point out to the pictures that show the pill burden, the boxes that carry the inscription that the patients havedied. Moving, hope-filled, despairing, all these moods are depicted, and all are true. All pictures courtesy Shweta Vitta.