Tuberculosis
05 September 2025
Tuberculosis The Tubercle bacillus man’s old-age enemy. It claims more lives than any other single disease agent. An obvious corollary is that the scourge is difficult to control. With the spread of AIDS, the danger from Tuberculosis has increased manifold. It is thus not surprising that greater media attention is now focussed on the problem. The WHO calls TB the “ Worlds most neglected crisis ”. Recent reports in the Indian Press have highlighted the problem. Fifteen million Indians Succumb every year to this disease.
So what can be done? Considerable criticism has been directed at the 33 year old National Tuberculosis Control Programme. Only about Rs 20 crore of Rs 35 crore earmarked in the central budget was utilized in 1993-1994. Medicines have often been in short supply, and diagonostic and infrastructural facilities are woefully inadequate. More importantly, many doctors fail to provide optional treatment largely as a result of poor trainging. The public, on its part, is not well-educated about the dangers of abandoning treatment midway through the long course. Yet, even if all the problems above were addressed, the fight against Tuberculosis will be an uphill one till new medical breakthrough are achieved. TB camn mimic other illnesses, and its insidious nature means that sometimes treatment is delayed for too long. Even when treatment is started on time , its long duration (the shortest treatment span is six months) means that many patients stop medication prematurely. To compound the problems , inadequately treated patients often develop resistance to the drug, and the bacillus becomes more difficult to treat when it infects. A fresh clearly, innovative new research is required to tackle these problems. New drugs are now available as well as newer approaches to neutralize the drug resistance. In India an enormous number of people are suffering from TB. It must needs more funding for basic research. TB is still largely a problem of the developing world, and India must contribute its mite in providing a reasonable solution. The national TB control programme must allocate more funds for research into quicker methods of diagnosis , prevention and treatment.
Career JK
