TB patients who smoke have high mortality rate: Expert

Our Correspondent

KANGRA, March 24

Tuberculosis (TB) patients, who smoke, have much higher mortality rate compared to non-smokers. However, on quitting, their risk reduces substantially.

Some focused studies indicate that deaths due to TB are three to four times higher among ever-smokers than never-smokers.

Dr RK Sood, District Tuberculosis Officer, stated this. Out of the seven lakh tobacco smoking-related deaths in India every year, an estimated two lakh deaths are of those with pulmonary TB due to smoking.

He said tuberculosis was the leading cause of deaths worldwide, with over 1,000 premature deaths in India alone every day. The World TB Day, falling on March 24, was not a celebration but a valuable opportunity to educate public about the devastation TB could spread and how it could be stopped, Dr Sood said.

He said the treatment given to TB patients was under DOTS but due to various reasons, some patients did not complete the treatment.

He said, “These incomplete, inadequate treatment and its different regiments led to emergence of Multi-Drug Resistant TB (MDR TB) which does not respond to available drugs. This form of TB is difficult to control and the treatment is extremely expensive, toxic, arduous, and often unsuccessful”.

He said DOTS had proven to prevent the emergence of MDR TB and also to reverse its incidence. The MDRTB was a tragedy for individual patients and a symptom of poor TB management. The best way to confront the challenge was to improve treatment and implement DOTS, he said.

If TB patients, diagnosed and treated under all sectors, are reported to the public health authorities, the mechanisms available under the programme could be extended to them to ensure treatment adherence and its completion.

Dr Sood said supervision was the key under the programme and to ensure proper TB diagnosis and case management, reduce TB transmission and address the problems of drug resistant TB, it was essential to have complete information of all cases. He said the Centre had declared TB a notifiable disease and all public and private health providers were to notify TB cases diagnosed or treated by them to the nodal officers for TB notification.