Tuberculosis a national emergency: Harsh Vardhan

The Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday launched India's first National anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance Survey, India 2014-15 saying that such an exercise will help form a better understanding of the disease.

The survey, which would be held in collaboration with WHO and USAID, will have the largest ever sample size, 5,214 people, covering 120 TB units in 24 states.

"The patients to be surveyed will include first timers and re-treatment cases. Their resistance levels against 13 anti-TB drugs would be observed - five of them first-line and eight second-line," Vardhan said.

He stressed on the international significance of the survey findings and analysis based on them would help form a better understanding of TB not only in India but all over the world.

"TB is a national emergency. India accounts for 99,000 of the global burden of 390,000 multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB cases annually - 25 percent of the total burden. The mortality associated with this form of TB is higher than drug-susceptible TB. Now, an even bigger challenge has emerged called "extensively drug-resistant TB" (XDR-TB)," he said.

The earlier surveys were carried out in Bangladesh, Brazil and China but had smaller sample sizes and covered just four drugs.

Vardhan further said that an email repository will be built up for establishing connectivity between the government and all doctors in the country as it will help in the national fight against TB.

It would facilitate instant transmission of news to all health authorities, public health and healthcare providers, public health laboratories and healthcare professionals.

"The repository could be utilised to spread information on new medical knowledge to all doctors," he said.

Recalling the first TB survey conducted in India- by Dr Arthur Lankester, the Secretary of the Medical Missionary Society of India in 1914-16 - Vardhan said, "People would lose faith in these surveys if nothing short of time-bound, target-set programmes are launched. We did it for polio, so let us use the same energy to fight TB."

He re-launched the Ministry's media campaign on TB.

"Let us focus on advocacy and social mobilisation. It is another tragedy that the vast masses of people are more conscious about cancer and AIDS than TB. They should be reminded that the high incidence of TB even after a century of government programmes is a matter of national shame," he said.