Meghalaya: IMA extends support for ending Tuberculosis

Shillong: Tuberculosis, the world's most significant infectious disease has emerged as the leading infection that kills after COVID; the Meghalaya chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) recently held a brainstorming session on India's target of ending the menace of tuberculosis by 2025.

"Delayed diagnosis, drug defaulting, uncontrolled co-morbidities like diabetes, reactivation of latent TB, the emergence of drug-resistant variants, a limited number of accredited laboratories for high-end drug sensitivity testing, and malnutrition in the backdrop of low socio-economic status are plausible factors negatively affecting the tuberculosis control programs," a North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) official said.

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Elucidating the implication of the natural history of tuberculosis, GK Medhi, Head of Community Medicine said that the elimination of TB in the country within the next 30 months from now is an "abstract goal with a cautious optimism" from a public health perspective.

Speaking on the occasion, Director NEIGRIHMS, Nalin Mehta said that ending TB within a short time may "indeed be a tall order, but in human endeavors, such urgency makes it all the more important to come together to brainstorm for a national cause".

Quoting Ronald Ross (who discovered the life cycle of malaria to win the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology, he emphasized the evolutionary fight of two parallel universes- the unassuming yet genetically smart single-cell microorganisms and the human race that boasts of its collective scientific and intellectual prowess.

Meghalaya Principal Secretary Health and Family Welfare, Sampath Kumar said malaria was once rampant in Meghalaya but a concerted effort of the government through the adoption of the exploratory factor analysis model that first started with the Garo hill districts (where malaria was highly endemic then) led to phenomenal reduction of malaria cases through early detection and aggressive anti-malarial medicines by Health Care Workers.

"Similar approach may be explored, adopted or adapted for tuberculosis," he suggested.

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