India Fights a Tougher TB

A MDR-TB patient at a Médecins Sans Frontières clinic in Manipur in north-eastern India. Credit: Bijoyeta Das/IPS.By Bijoyeta DasNEW DELHI, Mar 5 2014 (IPS) For years Joba Hemron, 50, prayed that her cough would go away. She was diagnosed with Tuberculosis (TB) in 2011. She was put on a Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS), provided free at a public health clinic in Bongaigaon district in Assam. But soon she began missing too many doses. “My sons work in the fields, I was too weak to go on my own to get the pills,” she says. She went to a private clinic, hoping to collect all the medicines at once. That was expensive, which meant she could again not complete the course."Each time the patient moves from one doctor to another, physicians tinker around with the drug combination, further worsening the drug resistance." Three years and five doctors later, she kept losing weight. “I took medicines whenever convenient but I was only getting worse.” Her family sold a goat and with the money traveled to the state’s capital, Guwahati. She was diagnosed with multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). “I don’t know what this means, no one explains anything. Will I get well?” she asks. Her frail body shakes as cough rakes her lungs. For many like Hemron, lack of proper diagnosis and interrupted dosages are increasing their resistance to available drugs. Drug resistance is human-made – an iatrogenic disease resulting from mismanagement of TB, experts say. Drug res...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: Global & Universal Authors: Tags: Active Citizens Asia-Pacific Civil Society Development & Aid Featured Gender Headlines Health Human Rights Regional Categories Women's Health drugs India Resistance TB Source Type: news