Researchers are predicting that India will experience an epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the next two decades “if changes are not made to the way patients are managed in the public and private sectors,” according to an article published by Healio.
India already has the highest estimated number of patients with tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the world, Dick Menzies, MD, of the respiratory epidemiology and clinical research unit at McGill University, and colleagues noted. They estimate only minor changes in overall risk for infection, incidence, or prevalence of TB in India over 20 years under current practices.
“However, if these practices are not corrected, we project the tuberculosis epidemic will shift gradually from one that is predominantly drug susceptible to one with increasing drug resistance,” they wrote in The Lancet Public Health.
