Bengaluru reports 43 TB cases in a week

Bengaluru: In just a week, the state has reported some 689 TB cases, of which 43 are from Bengalulru. But these high figures still do not give the true picture of tuberculosis prevalence, as a large number of cases go unreported.

According to the World Health Organisation, the state's TB figure would be 217 cases per lakh population, but the current disease burden only shows 101 cases per lakh population, indicating a huge void in TB case reporting.  “The numbers are big, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. These numbers are what we have from the public setup. Private healthcare establishments need to be roped in to get proper statistics on the disease burden,” says Dr R. Raghunandan, state TB Officer. 

To tackle the growing numbers, the state is looking for public private partnership, including roping in private pharmacists and local chemists. "For proper disease prevalence study, we need to have proper figures, for which we are trying to rope in medical colleges, private hospitals and chemists under RNTCP. The state, however, is yet to pick up on facilitating schedule H1 drugs, under which all private pharmacists registered under the RNTCP program would keep details of the anti-TB drugs, names of the patients and doctors referring them.

“It is in fluid state, but yes we have already started the process of getting it on track. Under this, the druggists and chemists are to stock up the RNTCP drugs and become a dot provider and then they would link up private practitioners to concerned medical shop. After this, all national drugs will be provided free of cost to TB patients," he adds. Sources said that the state is also planning to incentivise the pharmacists to become a partner with the state in TB elimination. 

In Karnataka, in 2016, 6% of the total registered cases succumbed to the disease. "But, these numbers are again from the public setups and not private hospitals," he adds. “TB is a burning problem and everyone needs to pool in to help us tackle it, just like in the case of polio or Mission Indradhanush," Dr Raghunandan sums up.