A city-based NGO has questioned the Indian health administration’s policy of selectively rolling out the drug Bedaquiline.
The drug is used to treat multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis in patients who do not respond to conventional treatment regimen.
The Indian health administration has allowed access to the drug at select hospitals in a handful centres other than Hyderabad or any other Telangana district, which the NGO Helping Hand Foundation (NGO) has questioned.
Through RTI queries sent to Telangana and Central TB offices, the foundation learnt that the State can get supply of the drug only after procurement of the drug and training of staff are completed.
The training process was completed in April but the foundation recently learnt that the State had not received funds from the Centre required for introducing the drug here.
Referring to the time elapsed since they filed the first RTI to determine details of rollout in April, Mujtaba Hasan Askari of the HHF said, “We were told recently that the budget for this program was not sanctioned by the CTB so far. Now it seemingly looks like there is still no firm date for roll out of the Bedaquiline drug to the MDR TB patients in Telangana in the near future.”
India aims at to getting rid itself of the ancient disease by 2025 in the face of growing number of drug resistant cases. In Telangana, a treatment target is set for 50,000 patients. Through RTI applications filed earlier this year, the HHF learnt that 1,722 cases of the MDR TB were reported in 2016 in Telangana, with large gaps in data from private sector. In Hyderabad alone, 35 cases are diagnosed everyday.
The NGO is pressing the State Government to make available Bedaquiline and Delamanid. The access to Bedaquiline made news in the recent past as a family was forced to approach the Delhi High Court to gain access to the Bedaquiline, often referred to as the last-resort drug.
