Over 30K untreated TB patients pose major health risk in Telangana

HYDERABAD: Raising a major health concern, a staggering 30,847 tuberculosis patients in Telangana were left untreated in 2014, according to a government document circulated during the zonal task force workshop ­ south zone 1 meeting early this year.
Though TB India 2014, the annual status report, puts the number of patients treated by the Telangana TB cell at 41,287, the government document (a copy of which is available with TOI) says it was way below the 72,674 TB cases estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO), a gap of 42 per cent.
The TB India report puts Hyderabad on top in the number of TB cases among the districts of Telangana. It saw 6,612 cases, followed by Ranga Reddy with 5,791 and Mahbubnagar with 4,076. If the additional 42% was also taken into account, the figures would see a huge jump.
This situation has left experts worried as untreated TB patients pose a serious threat and can spread the contagious airborne TB disease via droplets.
"The Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria can remain airborne when an infected patient coughs, making healthy persons susceptible to infection when they inhale. Any person who has inhaled the bacteria has a 20% lifetime risk of developing TB," said Dr Sunitha Nareddy, consultant, infectious diseases, Apollo Hospitals.
In fact, WHO estimates that out of the three million patients remaining untreated in the world, nearly a million are from India. These patients remain outside the ambit of the state-funded TB control programme due to mistaken diagnoses and poor awareness.
"Many private doctors misdiagnose prolonged cough that lasts for more than two weeks to be a routine health problem, and prescribe cough syrups and antibiotics. Patients who have other complaints like fever, sweating at night and loss of weight should be advised to undergo a sputum test or a mantoux test (skin test to detect TB) at the designated microsopic centre at a government centre.But this does not happen," lamented P Sanjay Ram, project officer at Indian Development Foundation, an NGO.
Not surprisingly, misdiagnosed TB patients not only have a reduced chance of making a healthy comeback but also infect others.
Sanjay Ram also blamed private hospitals for not sharing data of tuberculosis patients with the state authorities, as was made mandatory after TB was made a notifiable disease in 2012.
"If TB patients stop the treatment mid-way, very soon their disease would develop into Multi-Drug Resistant (MDR) TB cases," he warned.