A for Accountability and Audit for TB deaths is missing in #EndTB response
SHOBHA SHUKLA - CNS
TB is preventable and curable. Then why is it the deadliest infectious disease worldwide?
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When TB is preventable and curable then why over 1.1 million people died of it worldwide in 2023 (as per the latest WHO Global TB Report 2024)? Even one TB death is a death too many. Most of these deaths took place in low- and middle-income countries. Unless we find what went wrong and what could have done better, how would we ever improve TB programmes in order to avert these untimely deaths?
A young woman of 19 years old died of TB in Delhi (India). When experts looked at the case, it became evident that it was a failure of the system. This girl was a poor migrant worker. Her father had died of TB. Her sister too had TB. They were seeking healthcare from the private sector and they fell through the cracks. "Probably, they could not continue the treatment regularly... nobody was tracking them... or following up on them... and by the time she was admitted in LRS Institute (now known as National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases or NITRD), she had a very extensive bilateral disease and she ended up dying," said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Principal Advisor of National TB Elimination Programme, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Dr Soumya earlier served as Chief Scientist of World Health Organization (WHO) and Director General of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
"At NITRD they had put her on the ventilator, they did everything possible but could not save her," said Dr Swaminathan. She was speaking at a special WHO session at World Health Summit regional meeting.
A 19-year-old girl died in India's national capital Delhi, which has state-of-the-art TB and healthcare infrastructure in public sector too. She died of drug-sensitive TB (which means her TB bacteria was NOT resistant to any TB medicine).
"Such cases are occurring everyday but are we paying attention to that? Are we learning lessons? Are we trying to improve the system?" asks Dr Swaminathan.
Despite being curable, TB is the deadliest infectious disease globally
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