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Aug 30 (5 days ago)
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To,
The Chairperson,
National
Human Rights Commission,
New Delhi.
Dear Sir,
I want to bring your kind attention towards the news
paper link of English daily news paper "The Telegraph'' on August 30 , 2014, edition
regarding "Lack of food behind half of TB cases- Holes in control bid'' (news
clipping file annexed).
Lack of food behind half of TB cases- Holes in control bid |
| G.S. MUDUR |
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New Delhi, Aug. 29: Poor
nutrition is the biggest contributor to India’s burden of tuberculosis
and explains why the number of new patients each year has remained
nearly static despite two decades of TB control efforts, a research
study has suggested.
The study has
found that the infections in about 55 per cent of patients — including
67 per cent in girls between 15 and 19 years and 62 per cent in
adolescent boys — appear linked to under-nutrition.
Health researchers
at the Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences (HIMS), Dehradun, and
McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who conducted the study say their
findings highlight a key factor that activates TB infection but has
been largely ignored by health authorities.
“Our TB control
efforts have focused almost exclusively on biomedical aspects — a
vaccine given during infancy, diagnosis and drug-therapy,” said Anurag
Bhargava, a senior medicine consultant at the HIMS and the study’s lead
author.
The findings were published today in The National Medical Journal of India.
The vaccine does
not provide long-term protection. India’s incidence of TB — new cases
per year — has remained fairly static at about 175 per 100,000
population over the past decade. India’s public health system had
documented over 1.2 million cases in 2012.
The bacilli that
cause TB may remain dormant and silent in the body for years without
causing any symptoms until factors such as poor nutrition, smoking or
diabetes suppress the immunity and cause active disease.
Health experts
estimate that nearly 400 million people in India are already infected
but have no symptoms because their immune systems are keeping the TB
bacilli in check. But impaired immunity puts them at risk of developing
active disease.
“With the focus on
diagnosis and drugs, the importance of nutrition has been ignored,”
said Soumya Swaminathan, director of the National Institute For Research
in Tuberculosis, Chennai, who was not associated with the study.
But while the TB
control programme is responsible for diagnosis and treatment,
Swaminathan and other experts say, ensuring adequate nutrition for the
population could be seen as a task that would involve other non-health
arms of the government.
The study by
Bhargava and his colleagues used national data on under-nutrition to
derive estimates for the proportion of TB cases that could be explained
through this factor. “This (55 per cent) is a big fraction,” said
Madhukar Pai, an epidemiologist at McGill University and co-author of
the study. “It suggests that unless we tackle malnutrition, it may be
difficult to control TB,” Pai said.
An earlier study
published four years ago by health officials who manage the country’s TB
programme had estimated that under-nutrition contributes to only about
31 per cent of the cases, while the proportion linked to HIV infections —
that also lead to suppressed immunity — was estimated to be 11 per
cent.
It has been estimated that smoking accounted for 9 per cent and diabetes for 5 per cent of active TB infections.
However, the
analysis by the HIMS-McGill team found that in three eastern states —
Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand — the fractions of TB cases associated
with poor nutrition were above 60 per cent.
“For all the hype
about economic growth, the epidemic proportions of poor nutrition and
TB suggests that India has a long way to go to address inequity and
improving the health of the poor,” Pai said.
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Therefore it is kind request please take appropriate
action at earliest.
Thanking You,
Sincerely Yours,
Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi
Founder & CEO
Peoples' Vigilance Committee on Human Rights/Jan Mitra
Nyas
An Initiative of JMN
SA 4/2 A Daulatpur, Varanasi
Mobile No: +91-9935599333
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