NEW DELHI: India can become free of tuberculosis by 2025 by taking lessons from the Covid pandemic, say experts. According to them the best option to fight the disease, which has seen a 19% surge in 2021, is to follow the same methods taken to battle Covid — test, treat, track, and find a successful vaccine for TB.
Dr Zarir F Udwadia, a leading pulmonologist who co-authored the Lancet report on TB highlighting the cases in the time of Covid-19, said the pandemic in a single stroke wiped out decades of slow but steady progress in global TB-control.
The consultant chest physician at PD Hinduja Hospital and MRC in Mumbai said tuberculosis detection was reduced by 25.1% in India in 2019. “We have lots of ground to cover. Let us hope TB control can benefit from this pandemic. If we could discover 33 different vaccines for Covid within two years, surely we can improve on the century-old BCG vaccine for TB.”
According to Dr Preeti Kumar, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), “What we can take from the Covid is the strengthened management information system (MIS) used for the pandemic.” MIS is a data collection method, collation, analysis, and program performance improvement and monitoring. “It is time for India to direct its effort to find a safe and effective vaccine for TB,” she told this newspaper.
Accepting that Covid has “significantly reversed gains” made in tuberculosis control, Dr Mubasheer Ali, senior consultant, Apollo Telehealth, said the absolute percentage of those succumbing to the disease has risen to 5-7%, up from 1-2% during pre-pandemic times.