2m new TB cases in India last year

Kounteya Sinha, TNN, Nov 15, 2010, 04.21am IST

Article

NEW DELHI: India is saddled with highest burden of tuberculosis — with nearly 2 million new cases recorded in 2009. Out of an estimated 1.3 million people who died of TB in 2008, the nation alone accounted for 2.8 lakh lives.

India's case detection was around 67%, while the estimated number of TB cases that had become multi-drug resistant was 99,000 in 2009.

Even though the TB mortality rate has fallen by 35% since 1990, the disease claimed 1.7 million lives last year — of which 3.8 lakh were women.

According to World Health Organisation's annual report, "Global Tuberculosis Control 2010," around 4,700 die of TB daily. An estimated 9.4 million contracted the disease in 2009 — the same number as the previous year. However, the incidence of TB was stable, or falling in all 22 countries that have the highest burden of the disease except South Africa.

Six million lives are being saved annually as compared to 1995, thanks to improved detection and treatment. "There are still 1.7 million deaths a year from a disease that is perfectly curable in 2010. At this pace, it will take millennia to get rid of TB," said Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO's Stop TB unit.

However, "the biggest challenge of all" — as per the WHO — was an estimated 4.4 lakh multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains of TB a year, which are both hard to detect and treat.

"The main issue is in Russia, China and India, where most of the global (MDR) burden lies," said Raviglione. The global detection rate for MDR TB was about 5%.

WHO estimates that the largest number of new TB cases in 2008 occurred in the Southeast Asia Region, which accounted for 34% of incident cases globally. However, the estimated incidence rate in sub-Saharan Africa is nearly twice that of the Southeast Asia Region, which has recorded over 350 cases per 100,000. Among TB patients notified in 2009, an estimated 2.5 lakh had MDR-TB. Of these, slightly more than 30,000 (12%) were diagnosed with MDR-TB and notified.

The four countries that had the largest number of estimated cases of MDR-TB in absolute terms in 2008 were China (100,000), India (99,000), Russia (38,000), and South Africa (13,000). By July 2010, 58 countries had reported at least one case of extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).

"India is a country which has seen the most spectacular increase in doing the right things in TB control," Raviglione said, pointing to a shift from sparse detection and treatment a decade ago to nationwide coverage. "In terms of treatment, possibly in the next 2-3 years, we will have for the first time I would say since the 1970s, two or three compounds that are effective against multi-drug resistant TB. So this will give us an extra weapon," Raviglione explained.

It was estimated that in 2009, 3.3% of all new TB cases had MDR-TB. TB is among the three main causes of death among women between 15 and 44 years.


Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/