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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | After battle with MDR-TB, they emerged winners -Malathy Iyer

After battle with MDR-TB, they emerged winners -Malathy Iyer

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published Published on Mar 24, 2014   modified Modified on Mar 24, 2014
-The Times of India


MUMBAI: "It is a miracle I'm alive," said 31-year-old Borivli resident Deepti Chavan, who was given six months to live in 2004. Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) had literally eaten away her left lung and doctors were skeptical she would live for long.

Drug-resistant TB is emerging as one of the biggest health challenges-more and more are getting infected (see box) even as the number of effective medicines is shrinking. Patients with drug-resistant TB need up to 14,600 pills and around two years to completely recover. The success rate for treatment of MDR-TB is 48%.

On Monday, the BMC will felicitate several patients who completed the course. "We need to motivate them to keep taking the drugs," said Dr Minni Khetrapal, Mumbai's TB officer.

Chavan said that her medications were changed every two weeks as her symptoms-fever, cough and loss of weight-didn't disappear. She had to drop out of her engineering course and the medicines altered her skin and appearance. "I underwent two lung operations, but I had to wait for over four months to find a surgeon willing to operate on me the second time," she recalled on the eve of World Tuberculosis Day.

MDR-TB drugs have to be strong to kill the TB-causing microbes, but in the process they cause deafness, jaundice, fatigue, and hallucinations.

Experts believe MDR-TB emerged because patients didn't adhere to the treatment. In 2012, only one in four patients with MDR-TB was detected.

Ravi (name changed), a 30-year-old worker in an imitation jewellery-making firm, remembers being irritable 24x7. Yet, he persevered with the course because he wanted to meet his ailing mother before anything untoward occurred. Ravi didn't visit his family living in Uttar Pradesh for a year and isolated himself at his workplace so that he wouldn't infect others.

Twenty-year-old Rajesh joined an NGO working for TB prevention after undergoing an 18-month treatment at BMC's Dharavi centre. "Nobody in my family has TB, but I got infected with MDR-TB. Doctors said it is because I live in a crowded place like Dharavi and travel in crowded trains," said Rajesh. He now educates people on the need for proper nutrition to keep TB at bay.

But the most positive message comes from Chavan. "If I could make it, surely everyone can. Just don't miss your medications." Chavan also wanted her photograph to be published so that people realize that MDR-TB doesn't leave behind any trace. "I am back to being normal," she added.


The Times of India, 24 March, 2014, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/After-battle-with-MDR-TB-they-emerged-winners/articleshow/32576348.cms


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