India Becomes Second Country With Totally Drug-Resistant TB

In a troubling development, at least twelve patients in Mumbai, India have been infected with a totally drug-resistant form of tuberculosis and at least one has died from a disease that, while still deadly, had hopes of stabilizing in the developing world.

Iran was the first country to report cases of drug-resistant TB three years ago. This discovery hopefully makes India only the second country to find this particularly deadly form of the disease. But, the first emergence of a totally drug-resistant TB in 15 patients in Iran included Afghani, Azerbaijani, and Iraqi immigrants, leading health workers to assume the total number of cases was higher then originally diagnoses since health care is practically non-existent along these border regions.

Worldwide only two-thirds of countries with some form of resistant TB have the labs to diagnose those strains, with only 10 percent of the multi-drug resistant TB patients receiving treatments with cure rates as low as 25 percent.

In a letter published by the Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID) last month, India health practitioners noted that at least four of the 12 Indian patients saw a number of doctors and at least three received partial, multiple courses of the wrong antibiotics. Only 5 of 106 private practitioners practicing in the Dharavi area where these patients emerged could prescribe a correct prescription for a patient with multi-drug resistant TB.

Of course the problem with prescribing the wrong medication is to amplify drug resistance, making the strain even more lethal. This puts public health practitioners in a real bind. Treating TB was already a cumbersome process that requires at least six months of pill combinations that patients must take long after they start to feel well. It is not uncommon for a course of treatment to go unfinished as a result. Yet TB is one of the most problematic of diseases, accounting for 9.4 million cases and 1.7 million deaths in 2009. And with funding for global health initiatives shaky, this is the kind of development that could spread rapidly with devastating consequence.

Read more: drug resistance, india, public health, tuberculosis

Photo from mckaysavage5 via flickr.

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Ellen M.

11:01PM PDT on Mar 18, 2012

Another epidemic would spread quickly and be devastating!

send a green star

Rebecca S.

2:10AM PDT on Mar 17, 2012

scary...

Wende Anne M.

4:58AM PST on Feb 6, 2012

It's a frightening report but is anyone surprised? This has been a disaster waiting to happen for decades. And it's all down to the misuse of antibiotics. It is easy to buy antibiotics in India, at markets and in health stores. Many so called remedies are routinely sold with mixes of ingredients of which antibiotics is one with inadequate instructions for their use. The folk who use them, do so indiscriminately with the result that the infections inevitably become immune to any possible proper use in the future. The clue is in the name: anti = against and biotic = living organisms. Antibiotics have been effective at curing infection because they destroy the living organisms which are causing the diseases. But if they are wrongly and indiscriminately prescribed, the organisms will mutate to become immune from their effect. So this has finally happened.

Properly administered they have been a force for good and have saved many lives - including mine. They should, however, always be given with instructions to take a course of probiotics FOLLOWING the completion of the course because antibiotics do not specifically target just the 'bad' bugs; they kill ALL the flora and fauna - even the good stuff and that needs to be replaced.

Dijana D.

3:38PM PST on Feb 5, 2012

Elsa O.

1:21PM PST on Feb 4, 2012

thank you

Brian M.

12:49PM PST on Feb 2, 2012

Disease pandemics will become much more common over the next few decades.

Laura M.

11:52AM PST on Feb 2, 2012

pretty scary prospect...

Kathy P.

10:11AM PST on Feb 1, 2012

thanks for this

Frank S.

8:29AM PST on Feb 1, 2012

This is because the Medical Profession is too busy finding ways to squeeze more money from you than to find CURES.Politicians and doctors....their only GOD is money. How sad.

4:21AM PST on Feb 1, 2012

Ernest is right, Big Pharma and their drugs have become our bodies version of Monsantos
GMO's.....and i'm afraid it will take hold faster than many want to realize.