Paris health meet shames India on TB drugs shortage

International activists jeered at Indian officials during the 44th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Paris, France over the unavailability and substandard supply of tuberculosis drugs in India. Tuberculosis kills about a thousand people in the country every day.

Over 11 activists from international non-profit organisation Treatment Action Group (TAG) abruptly interrupted additional health secretary Chandra Kishore Mishra’s speech at the conference. He was speaking on the topic, ‘Is MDR-/XDR-TB a real threat in India?’.

The activists hijacked the stage and shouted  slogans like ‘Shame India’ and ‘The tuberculosis genocide must stop’. They also pointed at the Indian delegation and said, “They should take the next flight back home and fix the supply, management and monitoring systems for tuberculosis to a desired level. If you don’t do this, India is going to be a breeding ground for drug resistant TB. We, global citizens, are not going to allow other global citizens who you are custodians of, to continue suffering like this.”

TAG’s Dr Bactrin Killingo said the Indian government continues to be in denial about  drug stock-outs. “Children are dying while people continue to say there is no shortage of drugs,” he said, adding that in spite of setting up a joint monitoring committee, which suggested steps to tackle the issue of drug shortages, there is no official report on how the government plans to solve the problem.

The World Health Organization’s Global TB report in 2013 has estimated that 64,000 people are infected in India.

Mishra said, “We are planning our current strategy. There have been intense discussions on MDR TB cases in India in the last few days and I appreciate that.  Policy implementation issues may arise but if the approach is correct, we will reach somewhere.”

A senior health ministry official said, “Apart from the current load of 16,000 patients, we plan to trace an additional 50,000 MDR-TB patients and put them on treatment.”

National plan
The Union health ministry has set a budget of Rs710 crore to tackle TB.

Supply for additional 15,500 MDR-TB patients will arrive in India from Global Drug Facility of International Stop TB partnership by Dec end.

A second tender for ordering 35,500 MDR-TB medicine courses will open on Nov 19.