Chennai: With finance minister Arun Jaitley, in his Budget speech, having committed to the eradication of tuberculosis by 2025, the efficiency by which Bedaquline, a medicine used to treat Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis (MTR TB) has been rolled out, is being questioned by some experts in the industry.
Stating that there is something amiss in the government’s policy in rolling out Bedaquline, Dr Shah Alam Khan, professor in the Department of Orthopaedics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), said, “In a country which has an annual incidence of around 99,000 new cases of MTR TB, only 164 patients have been enrolled for Bedaquline therapy in the hospitals till date.”
With the availability of the drug having been restricted to just six hospitals in five different cities, namely, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Guwahati, the availability of the drug to patients from other cities is being questioned.
In an article written by Prof Shah, he brought up the issue of a young girl from Patna denied the drug despite being in dire need. “The rationing of Bedaquiline by the government on the fears of drug resistance is understandable. The rampant use of anti-tubercular medicines have resulted in India having 4.80 lakh new cases of MTR TB in 2015. But, is there a scientific rationale for rationing the drug, of putting it beyond the reach of the patient (and health practitioner), to prevent the development of resistance against it?” he questioned.
However, state TB Officer Dr Veera Kumar said that Bedaquiline is to be decentralised and that the drug is not resisted from anyone in need in the state.
“If a patient from Bangalore comes to Tambaram – wherein the eligibility test is conducted – we provide the full course of the Bedaquline treatment following which, we give necessary instructions to the state TB Officer, Karnataka, for further management and follow-up,” he said.
“One should not blame the way the drug is rolled out, or the state run TB control programmes for the rise in drug resistant TB cases. “We constantly request patients to take the medication for the complete period of six months. However, many fail to do so. We have therefore made it mandatory for the block level treatment supervisors to urge the patients to complete their medication period as instructed,” added the officer.
