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WHO: Resistant TB occurs due to incompetence of physicians
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
The spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis in India has been facilitated by unprofessional behavior by doctors, said Mario Raviglione, head of the World Health Organization's (WHO) anti-tuberculosis program.
According to Raviglione, first and foremost, we are talking about the errors of medical workers in private practice. From 50 to 70% of Indians who have developed a cough turn to such professionals. "The problem is that many private practitioners are simply incompetent," the WHO representative believes.
He noted that these doctors do not adhere to the tuberculosis treatment regimen recommended by the international organization, when a patient takes four different drugs for six months. Patients are prescribed fewer pharmaceuticals, which leads to the formation of drug resistance in pathogens. On the contrary, excessive therapy increases the toxic effect on the body and leads to unjustified treatment costs.
A random survey of about a hundred private practitioners in Mumbai found that these doctors prescribed 80 different anti-TB drug regimens to patients.
Sarman Singh, a microbiologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, reported that private hospitals begin treating patients for tuberculosis without receiving laboratory verification of the diagnosis. Raviglione also noted that private practice often uses diagnostic test systems that have not received WHO approval. The share of diagnostic errors in their use reaches 50%.
As mentioned earlier, in early 2012, 12 cases of tuberculosis resistant to absolutely all medical drugs for this infection were recorded in the Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai. The first samples of Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistant to any combination of known pharmaceuticals were isolated from biomaterials of sick Indians in October 2011.