“Many of the patients enrolled in the trial had either not undergone any testing or not completed the long-duration treatment… Most of the patients enrolled in the trial had extensive disease affecting both their lungs,” Dr. C Padmapriyadarsini, Director of the Chennai-based National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT) and the trial coordinator of the modified BPaL regimen, told The Hindu. People with TB not being tested on time and developing severe diseases is not peculiar to this trial.
According to the WHO Global TB report 2022, over 40% of 10.6 million people globally who developed TB in 2021 were not diagnosed. India along with Indonesia and the Philippines accounted for a 67% drop in the number of people with TB being diagnosed in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for the steep fall in the number of people diagnosed in 2020 and 2021.
However, in India, the gap between the estimated number of people who developed TB and the number of newly diagnosed cases each year has been huge even prior to the pandemic. According to the National TB prevalence survey in India 2019-2021 report, nearly 64% did not get tested for TB. It varied from 46% in the case of Kerala to 88% in Haryana.
