Indore (Madhya Pradesh): While the cases of Covid-19 decreased in the city, doctors have been witnessing a rise in footfall of tuberculosis patients in the hospital. Moreover, out of the total number of patients admitted to MRTB Hospital over 50 per cent are admitted for the treatment of tuberculosis.
“Yes, the footfall of patients has increased in the hospital. Most of the patients are those who are going through continuous treatment of TB for a long time but they didn’t connect with their doctors during Covid-19,” HoD of respiratory medicine Dr Salil Bhargava said. He said that these patients had not come out of their houses for fear of getting infected with Covid-19. “Some of the patients are those who came to hospital or connected with doctors after almost a year. Many of them have even broken the course of treatment and now their time of recovery will increase,” Dr Bhargava said. The community medicine expert said that patients should not break their course of treatment as it increases their time of recovery as well as damages their lungs more.
Meanwhile, district TB officer Dr Rahul Shrivastava said, “The number of new TB patients is stable, but those already getting treatment are reaching hospitals after a gap. This doesn’t include only patients of Indore but other nearby districts, as well.”
Dr Shrivastava added that about 1,200 new TB patients were registered in the district in the past two months and the number of patients registered in the district in 2021 was about 8,500. The TB officer added that their team provided free medicines to the patients continuously during Covid-19 at their doorsteps and continuously working for the elimination of TB by 2025.
62 found IGRA positive in District TB Centre at Malharganj
§ District TB Centre, Indore, is the only centre across the state to have the IGRA (Interferon-Gamma Release Assays) which is used for diagnosing the TB patients
§ Senior lab supervisor SK Pawaiya said the machine helps in diagnosing mycobacterium TB infection among patients
§ Out of 204 samples collected, 64 samples were found positive in the past one month
§ District TB Centre has a state-of-the-art laboratory for diagnosing TB samples and it is getting samples from across Indore division for this
