Mumbai: Nurse falls prey to MDR-TB at Sewri hospital

The threat of death due to tuberculosis looms large at every step for the 1,000-odd staff at the TB hospital in Sewri. On Wednesday afternoon, a 31-year-old nurse died of multi-drug resistant TB in the hospital, considered Asia's biggest. She had been working in the hospital for close to eight years. The problem of TB infection among caregivers is mind-boggling. Since 1999, close to 190 employees have been infected with TB, of which 83 have died.

The nurse was an employee of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation- run hospital since 2007. She also suffered from co-infection of Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (HIV), which she had contracted from her husband.

People living with HIV are from 26-31 times more likely to develop TB than persons without the virus, states the World Health Organization (WHO) studies.

The nurse was detected with TB in January earlier this year. She was on Category II drugs, oral pills Isoniazid, Rifampacin and Streptomycin injection. "Last week, as her health worsened and she was admitted to the hospital. It was realised after confirmatory tests that she had turned resistant to Category II drugs and developed multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB. MDR-TB is a far more potent form of the infection and is complicated to treat," said a doctor.

"On Wednesday, she was shifted to the X-Ray department as she had been asked to get her chest X-Ray done. After the X-Ray was done, suddenly she developed breathlessness and died almost instantaneously on the stretcher."

On an average, 12 employees in the hospital contract TB every year, of which five die. This means two in every five infected in the hospital are succumbing to the infection. "Presently, 17 workers have contracted multi-drug resistant TB in the hospital. Additionally, seven nurses, one clerk and one doctor are infected," said Pradip Narkar, secretary, Municipal Mazdoor Union.

dna had reported on July 20 that a 46-year-old doctor who had contracted Extremely Drug Resistant TB (XXDR-TB) had died in the hospital.

A senior nurse pointed out that the hospital is reeling from an acute shortage of protective equipment like N-95 masks. While the hospital should get 12,000 masks every month for their staff, it merely supplies a few hundred.

"We are falling acutely short of supply of masks. Inside the operation theatre we are exposed to manifold amount of TB bacteria as lungs are opened up for surgery. We will have to stop work if supply is not streamlined," said the nurse.