Keeping in mind the increasing multi-drug resistant (MDR)-TB cases in India, the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday launched India's first national Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance Survey.
The survey will be conducted on 5,214 patients across the country and will provide information on the prevalence of anti-tuberculosis drug resistance among new and already undergoing treatment patients.
"It often happens that patients who have TB disease stop taking the drugs soon after they start feeling better. They can become sick again as if the drugs are not taken correctly, the TB bacteria may still remain alive and the person may become resistant to those drugs and will have to then given second-line drugs," said Vardhan.
These additional drugs, called second-line drugs, must be taken for a very long time and is more expensive to treat. MDR-TB is resistant to two or more of the first-line drugs.
If a person with MDR-TB spreads the disease to someone else and that person comes down with active disease, it will be multi-drug-resistant from the beginning. The number of MDR-TB cases in the country had increased five-fold between 2011 and 2013.
Studies show one-third of the MDR-TB cases are resistant to fluoroquinolones, which are critical for MDR-TB treatment. MDR-TB if quickly identified can be cured sucessfully. Unfortunately, tests to determine whether a particular strain is resistant usually take several weeks to complete.
The survey will include tracking the effectiveness of TB prevention and control activities, design standardised regimens for the treatment of drug-resistant TB, assess epidemiological trends and identify and respond to outbreaks of drug-resistant TB.