Divanee – South Asian news and entertainment

In what sounds nothing short of the “Outbreak” genre witnessed only in Hollywood, Indian doctors reported the country’s first cases of “totally drug-resistant tuberculosis”. At least 12 cases of the lung disease’s untreatable form were announced this weekend, though outlets suspect many more cases remain unaccounted for.

The hospital in India that discovered the initial cases tested patients with at least a dozen medications, but to no avail. And while this lethal type of TB is not expected to spread at a rapid pace, the fear of any such possibility remains palpable. The disease has previously been found in Italy and Iran and is primarily transmitted through close personal contact.

Patients have typically failed antibiotics tried over a period of two to three years. In India, three of the 12 infected have died, and not a single successfully treated.

Adding fuel to the fire are claims that the three deceased fell victim to medical malpractice. Doctors from the P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Center wrote a letter stating that the patients in question received “erratic, unsupervised second-line drugs, added individually and often in incorrect doses, from multiple private practitioners”.

India’s Health Ministry has yet to release a statement and did not return requests for comment as of Monday.

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Sabrina Siddiqui is the editor-in-chief of Divanee.com.

Follow @sabrinasiddiqui