Nepali weather | For Nepal, a decisive element in the fight against tuberculosis

World Tuberculosis Day, March 24, will be an opportunity for governments to redouble their efforts to combat this devastating disease. More than 40% of TB cases worldwide occur in South Asia. While much research and funding is devoted to HIV-badociated TB and multidrug-resistant TB in sub-Saharan Africa, HIV-infected people account for only 9% of TB cases worldwide and less than 1% have TB. MDR-TB in 2017. Due to sample size, there is insufficient research on TB in South Asia, particularly in India, and non-HIV cases. If nothing is done, TB will cost an additional 28 million lives in the next 10 years.

These shocking figures may seem like overwhelming statistics, but at the emotional level in Nepal, we all know people, including many family members, who have suffered and died of TB. Many readers may have also suffered from tuberculosis and have been happily healed. Tuberculosis is so prevalent in South Asia that every working day clinicians struggle with the question of random patients: is it tuberculosis? This contrasts sharply with the western world where TB is essentially a biblical disease.

While Nepal is a model in community-based DOTS (community-based treatment of short-course), which ensures that referral patients take their medication, this will not be enough in the fight against tuberculosis, since A patient would have often already infected other people at home and at work. That's why active case research and early treatment are the key. Unfortunately, there is a mbadive underreporting – Nepal collects more than 40,000 new TB cases each year and more than 4,000 deaths, but many are not diagnosed and treated due to lack of resources for the fight tuberculosis.

The first-ever survey on the prevalence of tuberculosis in Nepal is ongoing and preliminary results show a substantial increase in the estimated total number of TB cases in the country. This would be consistent with findings from other prevalence surveys in the region, all of which showed that the burden of TB was significantly underestimated in South Asia. For example, the evaluation of data from multiple sources in India has shown an increase of more than 80% in the estimated number of incident TB cases, from 1.6 million to 2.9 million in 2014. Although it is better than the DOTS strategy, the only active screening and treatment will not be enough. put TB under control.