'Drug-resistant TB' found in Mumbai slums

Last Updated: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:30:00 +1100

Doctors in India say they have found cases of a rare strain of tuberculosis which appears totally resistant to antibiotics.

They say they tried to treat a dozen patients from Mumbai's slums for two years, but the infection proved to be resistant to drugs.

Experts say similar cases of incurable tuberculosis have emerged in Italy and Iran, and pose a serious threat to global efforts to control the disease.

"It is an untreatable form of TB in the sense that there are no available first and second-line drugs for it in the world," Zarir Udwadia, a TB doctor at the Hinduja National Hospital in Mumbai, said in a telephone interview.

But India's government said the laboratory at Hinduja was not accredited for some of the tests that Dr Udwadia's team carried out, and questioned the term "totally drug-resistant TB".

"The term ... is neither recognised by the WHO [World Health Organisation] nor by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program," it said in a statement.

Such cases can be managed by national extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB treatment guidelines, according to the WHO.

ABC/Reuters

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