In fever survey, Noida finds 6 tuberculosis cases in 10 days

NOIDA: As many as six new tuberculosis (TB) patients — of 54 suspected cases — were found in Gautam Budh Nagar during surveillance conducted over the past 10 days. With this, around 5,500 TB cases have been identified this year so far.
According to officials, TB patients are identified through surveillance, awareness drives and hospital visits every year. However, since 2020, more patients have been identified during intensive surveillance drives carried out across the district.

“Asha and ANM workers have helped identify several TB cases through the surveillance drives.They report all cases of fever, cough and cold as these are common Covid symptoms too. However, there are more distinctive qualifying symptoms for TB. We check for those and get the TB test done,” said Dr Sirish Jain, district nodal officer for TB control.
Jain added that OPD visits were not allowed during the Covid-induced lockdown and fewer people have been visiting hospitals unless essential during the pandemic. Yet, cases have been identified through door-to-door surveillance programmes.
TB is usually characterised by fever during the evenings, sweating while sleeping at night, low appetite, weight loss and cough for more than two weeks. During the fever surveillance, mandatory TB tests were done for all those found with cough for over two weeks and Covid test was done for those with cough for less than two weeks.
Officials said that while the surveillance has helped identify several TB cases since last year, the total number of cases may be lesser this year. The total number of cases were 9,960 in 2019 that reduced to 7,024 in 2020. A total of 5,475 cases have been identified this year so far. However, there is no specific reason why fewer cases may be getting recorded.
“There are three months still left in the year, the cases are fewer in 2021 so far. There doesn’t seem to be any variation in the TB bacteria. So, we can’t say why there may be fewer cases,” added Dr Jain.
TB testing and treatment are done free of cost at government hospitals. A medicine kit is provided by the government with all the instructions to follow the treatment protocol for six months. Doctors said that the most important thing in TB treatment is to continue regular medication. In multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB cases the treatment lasts at least one and a half years along with several tests. In Noida, about 2-3% of all cases are MDR TB cases.