With the emergence of drug resistant tuberculosis as a major public health threat, the World Health Organisation on Tuesday  released a $ 2155 million plan to thwart spread of the resistant strain in countries like India, South Africa, China and former USSR republics, where the disease burden is high.

With an estimated 87,413 cases, India has the world’s second highest multi drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis cases, next to China.

Reports are now coming on the presence of extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB strain, though the WHO says that official data is likely to come out by 2007 end.

Earlier this year, doctors from Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai had reported presence of the XDR strain in their TB patients. They claim,  though they have been seeing these hard-to-treat strains for quite sometime, the WHO has come out with this new category in 2006.

Feeling the pinch, the union health ministry has been carrying out surveys in Gujarat and Maharashtra in the last one year to assess the ground level situation.

While those surveys are about to be completed, three additional surveys in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and western Uttar Pradesh will be launched shortly. 

“We are also providing treatment in Maharashtra and Gujarat, after  preparation of the treatment protocol. Diagnostics laboratories are being set up in 15 states in the current fiscal to detect MDR cases. In 2008-09, all states will have at least one facility to detect drug resistant TB,” Dr L S Chauhan, Deputy Director General in charge of TB in the Health Ministry, told Deccan Herald.

Treatment expensive
But the MDR treatment is coming with a price.Since it costs Rs one lakh for each patient over 24 months, it will cost the state exchequer almost Rs 900 crore to treat the estimated number of patients at the moment. “India has already accessed $ 70 million from the Global Fund to fight against TB, AIDS and Malaria and more funds might come from international donors”, he said.

While over 400,000 cases of MDR tuberculosis are emerging every year due to poor management, last year, the dreaded XDR strain was reported in all regions of the world.

The XDR TB, considered a major public health threat, severely restricts treatment options and tends to push back the advancement made in TB treatment so far.

The new WHO-Stop TB partnership, therefore, suggests revisiting the global TB reduction target in the next decade.

Under the existing plan, it is proposed to treat 800,000 MDR patients by 2015, while the new strategy calls for treating 1.6 million MDR and XDR patients in the same period.