India staring at another health disaster amid a raging battle with Covid-19

 

The biggest crisis is India's longstanding battle with tuberculosis. The country has as many as 2.7 million TB patients currently, by far the most in the world.

As India’s surging coronavirus caseload becomes an increasing worry for the globe, another health disaster is silently unfolding.

The world’s strictest lockdown crippled both routine and critical health services. More than a million children have missed crucial immunizations and hospital births have shown a sharp decline, indicating many women may have gone through unsafe childbirth at home. Outpatient critical care for cancer plunged 80% from February levels, the latest government data show.

But the biggest crisis is India’s longstanding battle with tuberculosis. The country has as many as 2.7 million TB patients currently, by far the most in the world, and the disease kills an estimated 421,000 Indians each year. The current gap in care could lead to an additional 6.3 million cases and 1.4 million deaths from tuberculosis by 2025, according to a study by Zarir Udwadia, a pulmonologist at Mumbai’s P.D. Hinduja Hospital and Medical Research Centre.

“Miss a few days of any other treatment and you may not be harmed, but gaps in TB treatment will amplify resistance,” Udwadia said. “Our lack of health infrastructure is the reason we have been floundering amidst the sea of Covid cases. It’s the reason why we have not been able to make progress against traditional and old enemies like malaria, typhoid, dengue.”

The failure to control tuberculosis has long plagued successive governments in India, which spends just 1.28% of gross domestic product on public health. That has left the system ill-equipped to control deadly diseases such as coronavirus: The South Asian nation now has the second-highest Covid-19 infection tally in the world, trailing only the U.S.