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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Prod to govt for daily pills for TB patients

Prod to govt for daily pills for TB patients

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published Published on Mar 21, 2015   modified Modified on Mar 21, 2015
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: Health experts today criticised a government delay in implementing a proposed daily drug therapy for tuberculosis patients, meant to reduce the risk of relapse after completion of treatment.

Although the health ministry had itself last year released TB treatment standards emphasising a move towards daily therapy, virtually all patients treated under the government TB control programme receive thrice-a-week therapy, which carries a higher risk of relapse.

A consortium of non-government health organisations has asked the Centre to swiftly phase out the thrice-a-week therapy, saying the delays in implementing the daily regimen suggest the government is giving more priority to logistics and cost than patients' interests.

"We're asking for something that has been adopted by almost all countries but India," said Leena Menghaney, access campaign coordinator in India with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the international humanitarian agency.

"We're wondering when the health ministry will roll this out."

Most patients who develop TB for the first time need to be treated with a combination of four drugs for two months and a combination of two drugs for an additional four months to achieve a cure.

Almost all those who seek private treatment - an estimated half of India's TB patients - are prescribed daily drug therapy. But the TB control programme hands over the pills to its patients thrice a week, practising "intermittent therapy".

While the health ministry had last year signalled an intention to move to a daily regimen, there is no evidence on the ground for such a policy change yet, MSF and five other health organisations said in a media release today.

The last round of procurement bids started by the government last September - over six months after the health ministry had released the TB treatment standards - did not reflect any move towards fixed-dose combinations for daily therapy, the organisations said.

"Intermittent therapy has been known to be associated with a higher proportion of disease relapse," said Soumya Swaminathan, director of the Chennai-based Tuberculosis Research Centre, which functions under the Indian Council of Medical Research.

"The programme has a relapse rate of 12 to 14 per cent, which needs to be reduced."

An infectious disease specialist who requested not to be named said that signals of the need to shift from intermittent to daily therapy had emerged nearly 15 years ago.

A technical report by the World Health Organisation had in 2000 cited medical studies that suggested the rate of relapse was about five per cent after daily therapy and 10 per cent after the intermittent regimen.

The non-government health organisations have also urged the government to introduce fixed-dose-combinations - pills that combine two or three drugs - instead of the current practice of giving patients the four drugs as four different pills.

The fixed-dose-combinations will reduce the number of pills patients have to swallow during the first two months of treatment from seven to eight each day to three to four.

"When quality is assured, fixed-dose-combinations are preferable," said Swaminathan.


The Telegraph, 21 March, 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150321/jsp/nation/story_10034.jsp#.VQzbtOFr9U8


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