The World Health Organisation (WHO) is working with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on validating an Indian-made diagnostic test for tuberculosis.
If this is validated, India would have developed a TB diagnostic test for the world, Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist, WHO, said on Friday.
“We have the Indian-made diagnostic test — TruNat — that is in the process of getting validated. It will be the first point of care molecular TB diagnostic test that can be taken into a primary health centre and used because it is battery-operated. It is much more user-friendly than GeneXpert,” she said, while taking part in a felicitation programme at the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT) on World TB Day.
She said the first United Nations high-level meeting on TB was held in September last year. “Since then, the call from the UN meeting was to ask all countries, especially TB high-burden countries, to invest more in TB control. Currently, we have a gap of about two-thirds of what is needed annually for TB, including research and development. It is estimated that you need $2 billion per year to generate new tools, diagnostics, drugs, vaccines, and we are only spending less than a third of that,” she said.
TB burden
Dr. Swaminathan said India and some BRICS countries accounted for at least 70% of the TB burden. “India, Russia and China together have 50% of the world Multi Drug-Resistant TB burden. India has 27% of the world’s TB cases,” she added.
Pointing to the Lancet Commission on TB, Dr. Swaminathan, who was one of the co-chairs, said, “India has set a target of 2025 for elimination of TB.
The modelling shows it will at least be 2045 by the time we can make any difference. We need to add on new things and studies to reduce TB incidence and burden at the community-level.”
“We seem to be moving faster on MDR and XDR (Extensively Drug-Resistant) TB than on drug-sensitive TB. We need to look at other innovative approaches,” she said.
NIRT remembered “heroes” who made ICMR-NIRT what it is today on the occasion. They offered tributes to D. A. Mitchison, founder of bacteriology laboratory. Former director general of ICMR S.P. Tripathy was felicitated. Srikanth Tripathy, director in-charge of NIRT and Lt. Gen. D. Raghunath, principal executive (retd.), were present.
