CAPE TOWN: India has a major health challenge on its hands, figuring second on the list of countries with the largest concentration of people suffering from XDR-TB, the deadliest form of tuberculosis that is resistant to the most effective anti-TB drugs.

As per the statistics of the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are an estimated one lakh people in India who are suffering from XDR-TB that is resistant to the drugs like Isoniazid and Rifampicin used to treat multidrug-resistant TB besides being resistant to medicines used in second-line treatment of the bacterial disease.

While four per cent of the 8.8 million TB cases in the world are resistant to drugs, China has the largest number of XDR-TB patients at around 1.3 lakh, followed by India. Western Europe, however, has the highest rate of drug-resistant TB.

"XDR-TB is a big challenge, besides the HIV-TB combination, that India faces and it has to do more than the normal things to deal with the situation," Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of the Stop TB Department of the WHO, said.
 

The other hotspots for the drug-resistant type of tuberculosis are South Africa and Russia.

Raviglione, who was here to participate in the 38th Union World Conference on Lung Health that concluded last evening, however, expressed satisfaction with the efforts made by India in terms of covering the population with diagnostic and treatment facilities.

"The efforts made by India have been praised. The commitment is there and it has a huge amount of money allocated to itself by the World Bank, the US and others that it can use in dealing with the new menace," Raviglione said.

The consolation for India is that tuberculosis in its patients is not as commonly HIV/AIDS-induced as it is in the case of the African countries.

"Overall, the majority of the TB cases in India are not related to HIV, while in Africa, more than half of the TB cases are due to HIV/AIDS," the WHO official said.

The WHO has received reports of XDR-TB from 41 countries to date and the new strain raises concerns of a future TB epidemic with restricted treatment options that would jeopardize the major gains made in the control of the disease and progress on reducing deaths due to it among people living with HIV/AIDS.

The Stop TB Campaign of the WHO aims at saving the lives of 1.34 lakh people due to XDR-TB in 2007-08 and needs to raise 2.1 billion dollars to implement the plan.

The world conference, organised by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, an NGO, had a special focus on treatment of XDR-TB.

Also on its agenda was looking at ways to develop new vaccines, formulate better and faster diagnostic techniques and drugs that have a treatment time shorter than the current six to nine months.

Scientists, experts, activists and representatives from the industry attended the conference.