Suboptimal quality of tuberculosis care in Indian private health sector : Study

According to a new study, many private sector doctors in India miss the signs of tuberculosis and therefore provide patients with inadequate treatment. The results were published in PLOS Medicine.

The study financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and led by a team of researchers from McGill University was conducted in the metropolis of Mumbai and eastern Patna across 10 months between 2014 and 2015..The study found that primary care physicians who see patients when they initially visit for complaints of cough are the weak link in the fight against the pandemic.

India accounts for about a quarter of the global tuberculosis burden. Worldwide India is the country with the highest burden of both tuberculosis and MDR tuberculosis . There are an estimated 79,000 multi-drug resistant TB patients among the notified cases of pulmonary TB each year. India is also the country with the second highest number (after South Africa) of estimated HIV associated TB cases. For more see TB & HIV in South Africa.

In the study, Twenty-four "simulated patients" went to 1,288 private sector doctors, presenting symptoms ranging from a simple cough to a cough presented as a possible relapse. The simulated patients were trained to portray 4 TB “case scenarios” representing various stages of the disease and diagnostic progression. Between November 2014 and August 2015, the SPs visited representatively sampled private providers stratified by qualification: (1) allopathic providers with Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degrees or higher and (2) non-MBBS providers with alternative medicine, minimal, or no qualifications.