Jaunet Gurudas/ENS

Bangalore, Mar 22: Despite national and international thrust on the control of tuberculosis, unregulated private practitioners seem to be exacerbating the situation by administering treatment without proper monitoring. This has made the TB bacterium resistant to multi-drug treatment and this leads to the incidence of Multi-Drug Resistant TB or MDR-TB.

While the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) adopts Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse (DOTS), lack of adherence to it is the cause for MDRTB, say doctors at the Lady Wellington TB Centre.

WHO consultants to Karnataka too agree to this. While the National TB Institute has said that less than 3 per cent of the 18 lakh new TB cases detected every year are MDR-TB, a WHO report says that 1.1 lakh cases are reported every year.

This is attributed to private practitioners who administer anti-TB treatment without adhering to Directly Observed Treatment Short-course.

“The Revised National TB Control Programme specifies certain standards for a DOTS provider. The provider has to monitor the complete course of treatment.

But that is not the case with private practitioners and patients who selfadminister their treatment,” says WHO medical consultant at the State Headquarters for Revised National TB Control Programme Dr H R Raveendra Reddy.

Once a patient develops MDR TB, the cost of treating it exceeds by almost 50 to 200 times compared to regular treatment, and the time taken to cure it would be one-and-a-half years, against Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse which is usually administered for six months.

WHO observes World TB Day on March 24 every year.