India sees tuberculosis resurgence after Covid-19 hit fight against ‘silent killer’
- India faces an uphill battle to meet PM Narendra Modi’s goal of ending the spread of TB by 2025, after the pandemic reversed years of progress
- Increased mask-wearing was one silver lining, but more funding is now needed for TB vaccines and support to combat malnutrition, a major trigger for the disease
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India is the home to a quarter of the world’s TB infections and an estimated half a million people died of the curable lung disease in 2020 in the South Asian nation – one-third of the global toll.
In India, the number of new cases detected in 2020 actually fell by a quarter to around 1.8 million because of Covid-19 restrictions and as the pandemic diverted resources.
Nearly two-thirds of people with TB symptoms did not seek treatment, according to a 2019-21 nationwide government survey released on World TB Day on Thursday.
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Ashna Ashesh, 29, diagnosed with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis four years ago, saw how patients, many isolated and jobless because of lockdowns, struggled for support.
“They were incredibly afraid … They were reaching out for any kind of information that could be offered about how to access tests and medication,” said the public health professional with the Survivors Against TB collective.
“The impact has been immense … Covid-19 has set back the fight against TB quite significantly. A recovery plan for TB is critical, both in India and globally.”
Experts and survivors are calling for intensive grass-roots campaigns to find “missing” cases, more vaccine funding and support to combat malnutrition, a major trigger for TB.
Kuldeep Singh Sachdeva from the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease said states need to increase services such as house-to-house visits and mass screenings.
“That’s the only way now where you can eliminate TB,” said Sachdeva, who previously led the government’s National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme.
Officially Covid-19 has killed almost 520,000 Indians, but experts believe the true toll to be far higher.
India neglects a deadlier enemy, TB, amid coronavirus battle
The pandemic – which saw Covid-19 replace TB as the world’s deadliest infectious disease – did however have one silver lining: increased mask-wearing.
Sachdeva estimates this might have cut TB transmission by 20 per cent. Additional diagnostic machines procured for Covid-19 could be redeployed for TB, he added.
Mumbai – a megapolis of 20 million people and a TB hotspot – has rolled out a programme with young survivors such as Seema Kunchikorve, who was diagnosed with TB five years ago at 20, to keep current patients on track with medications.
“The treatment has a lot of [side] effects which patients can’t take,” Kunchikorve said during a TB awareness play staged at a school in India’s biggest slum Dharavi.
If there is a political will for TB, just like Covid-19, it definitely will give us good results
Vijay Chavan, who treats patients with drug-resistant TB at a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) clinic in Mumbai, said the Covid-19 battle had shown the way to fight the older pandemic.
At the clinic, which treats children as young as five, patients spend hours undergoing check-ups beside brightly coloured wallpapers featuring famous comic characters, before collecting a large tray of pills for their treatments.
“If there is a political will for TB, just like Covid-19, it definitely will give us good results,” he said.
