To conquer TB, patients must take their medicine
Indian Medical Tribune 2(11): 3
1994
ISSN/ISBN: 0971-488X PMID: 12179176 Document Number: 285039
Although the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) should report that the total number of tuberculosis (TB) cases has dropped 5.1% since 1992, experts stress that the potentially fatal lung disease is not yet under control. The incidence of drug-resistant TB remained about 13.7% of all reported TB cases in 1991 and 1992. TB is most commonly treated through the administration of four drugs given three times per week over a six-month period. TB experts and treatment specialists at the CDC and the American Thoracic Society jointly issued new treatment guidelines stressing the importance of ensuring that patients take all of their prescribed medications, even if it means going into the community and watching them swallow their pills. Patients who fail to adhere strictly to their treatment regimen of drugs risk developing drug-resistant TB disease and present a contagious public health threat. In addition to the acute risk of mortality from such resistant disease, the treatment cost of up to $150,000 dwarfs the $1,500-3,000 total expense required to treat patients with non-resistant TB under the new community based treatment program, Directly Observed Therapy (DOT). In DOT, health workers visit patients with TB in the workplace, home, and community to monitor their timely ingestion of prescribed medication against TB. Some patients have reported preference for this approach since it removes any personal worry that they may forget to comply with treatment on a regular basis. The experts also recommend that HIV-seropositive people with TB receive standard TB therapy and suggest treating TB positive parents with preventive drug therapy to control TB in children even if the children test negative for TB. The World Health Organization predicts that more than one third of the eight million new cases of TB this year will occur in people with AIDS.