Hyderabad: While notification and follow-up for tuberculosis has been a cause of concern, Apollo Hospitals has been able to integrate a system whereby it can be notified and also follow up with the patients.
TB is a notified disease since 2012 but due to lack of infrastructure, the total number of cases has not been registered. Due to this reason, every year, over 1 million patients were missed out. Dr Suneetha Narreddy, consultant of infectious diseases at Apollo Hospitals said, “With over 2.5 million cases every year, it is becoming very important to identify the disease, track the patient and ensure that they are cured.
This is a huge task as more than 50 per cent of the patients are seeking treatment for the disease in the private sector. Hence it is becoming important to notify the disease so that healthcare workers can follow up and check on the patient status.”
In the one-year project from June 2015 to March 6, 2016, 200 patients were identified in Apollo Hospitals and 95 per cent of them showed successful compliance with the programs’.
But the major problem is that most of the patients come to these hospitals after visiting two to three doctors. As there is no standardised diagnosis and treatment protocols, often TB is identified in an advanced stage. As the market is flooded with TB Gold, Platinum and other variety of blood tests, patients are confused as they only follow what their doctor advises.
Dr Sarabjit Chadha said, “A blood test for TB is not the right method to identify the disease. It has to be evaluated via sputum tests for pulmonary TB and via gene expert test for extra pulmonary TB.” With this project being successfully implemented in Apollo Hospitals, other hospitals like Care Hospital, Max Fortis in New Delhi and Hinduja Hospitals in Mumbai will also be taking it up.
