Homeopathy may help WHO to control the TB problem in India
Key words: DOTS, TB problem, homeopathy, private-practitioner, cost-effective.
In India, DOTS is reported to be one of the fastest expansions of the
strategy than anywhere in the world.1 By the end of 2004, 942 million
population had been covered and by the end of 2005 entire country was
expected to be covered under RNTCP.1
With the expansion of DOTS, TB scenario has started changing in India.
Patients from middle and low socio-economic class are shifting from
private practitioners to DOTS centres. It is favourable in India to
have full co-operation of NGOs, Medical colleges, private doctors (IMA)
against TB. However, the drawback is regarding case management
practices.1, 2
India has more new TB cases annually than any other country. Some
epidemiologists forecast a rise of 20% in the incidence in the next 20
yrs, for India, and 58.6% over a 15 yrs period for the world, at
large.3 However, nearly one-third of the world population is
asymptomatically infected by M.Tuberculosis,4 WHO has not yet found the
sufficient evidence of TB epidemic declining nationally.5
Following the rapid implementation of DOTS, India has reached 57% case
detection countrywide in 2004, and 70% within DOTS areas. A
surveillance report of CDC has indicated a relative increase of
extra-pulmonary TB cases in US from 16% in 1992 to 20% in 2000.6 DOTS
is dealing with the Pulmonary cases while extra-pulmonary tuberculosis
(EPTB) is coming out of the shadows which is far difficult to treat
because it presents with a diagnostic dilemma.7-8 Such patients are
left untreated for a long time. Even its primary infection site remains
undetected. Response of TB in some other conditions such as
tuberculomas to anti-tuberculosis treatment has not been well defined
as yet.9 No natural barrier has yet been found which can prevent
movement of TB bacilli from extra-pulmonary sites to pulmonary region.
Though the treatment of EPTB is easy with any effective regimen because
it is a paucibacillary disease8, yet lots of measures such as early
diagnosis will have to be developed for tackling the increased threat
of EPTB. And above all, such patients can not be investigated at the
time of terminating the treatment. However, these suppressed bacilli
may become active later.
Despite new advances in understanding the biology of TB bacilli we are
lacking in the development of newer drugs in last 30 yrs,4 while there
is need for development of new drug and new effective vaccines urgently.
A report of NDTB centre, New Delhi found that about 36% patients are
not satisfied with DOTS policy of stopping treatment without x-ray at
the end of treatment.7 And this way some cavitary lesions may remain
untreated that may eventually cause the reoccurrence of active TB.
While there is very high incidence of cavitary lesions in India, which
is one of the causes of poor impact of TB control programme.7
Although there is no doubt regarding the effectiveness of DOTS yet it
will be difficult to check the spread of tuberculosis since DOTS has no
provision for drug resistant strains (MDR and XDR TB) and, moreover, it
is providing no preventive procedures to check the recurrence of the
disease.10 There are lots of things regarding its final outcome that
are apprehending the mind of policy makers and researchers. Christopher
Dye et al have well predicted in their report "reaching the targets for
TB control" in 1998, if the targets are achieved by 2010,
three-quarters of worldwide tuberculosis burden would not be averted in
the next 23 years.11 While WHO has already shifted its target from 2005
to 2015.
Political will, operational and managerial problems are the same as they were responsible for the failure of NTP previously.
TB News of healthinitiative.org has shown their fundamental
apprehension whether DOTS services are reaching the poor, vulnerable
and underprivileged. The constraints under which RNTCP is working in
India are far bigger than those listed above. A few reports have
appeared in the media from time to time about misappropriation of RNTCP
funds.
WHO has launched DOTS as a marker of more
serious efforts to tuberculosis control. "Promoting awareness of TB and
DOTS in traditional healers, particularly in remote areas" is one of
the challenges for which WHO has made some planned activities, for
India, such as 'Mobilize community-based self-help groups and NGOs to
assess needs, promote early diagnosis and provide patient support.5
Discussion:
If we can design an Automatic Transaction of Medicine (ATM) machine,
which would prove to be far better, in many senses, than health workers
in the current settings of DOTS centres.
Unfortunately, proper use of traditional healers and general
practitioners has been greatly ignored in this scenario. A large number
of private practitioners from different systems of medicine, estimated
to be around 8 million, provide care to the patients in the country but
nearly 3000 private practitioners are officially providing RNTCP
services.12 Private practitioners from different fraternity can be
convinced to provide DOTS services to their patients. And they would
prove to be better than ordinary health workers if they are allowed to
provide their medicines along with DOTS services. Patients taking ATT
may need some medical help for his minor ailments and he or she can get
medical aid immediately in the same settings. The compliance is
decreased if other symptoms are not taken care of at DOTS centres,
leading to revisiting private practitioners and hence cost.
Nearly 0.27 million homeopaths are providing most economical health
care services in India. They could be engaged for the purpose of
providing DOTS. They would prove to be better than ordinary health
workers in all aspects. I can presume one more benefit of improved
doctor-patient relationship in such settings.
But we see there is a great ignorance of homeopaths in any national health programmes. Why it is so?
-
Mechanism of action of homeopathic drugs is still not clear. But there
are too many used conventional drugs which don't have clear mechanism.
There are many areas of chemistry, physics and other sciences that are
not well understood. It is always not possible to know everything about
a subject prior to using it effectively. Researches are made for same
purpose.
- Some persons believe that the homeopathic
results are simply because of the placebo effects. But every trial is
compared with a placebo first. So they should not oppose its use if it
is not putting an extra burden on TB control budget.
-
Homeopathy is supposed to work for the self limiting functional
disturbances. While it is a fully developed health science based on
fixed principals and has a holistic approach of ill person. Its basic
principals and fundamentals were developed by the modern doctors who
were in the search of some thing more useful but less harmful for the
already suffering persons.
-
Conventional doctors are not happy in sharing the positive results. But
as clinicians they want to use whatever thing may help their patients.
(Every hospital in India has a temple in their premises). Homeopathy
could also work as an adjuvant. This was the most accepted view of most
doctors of conventional medical science who had studied my published
and unpublished treated TB cases. They thought that there was something
extra other than ATT that had been used in such cases. Because, they
had never seen or even imagined results similar to my work of TB ever
before, they were willing to use homeopathy in their TB patients.
Conclusion:
Clinics of motivated general practitioners of any fraternity could be
used as DOTS centres. Failure of DOTS is being predicted from many
places due to many reasons; in this situation it would not be unethical
to take the help from every alternative system of medicine. For the
case of homeopathy, it is rather known as complementary medicine in
many countries. Whatever could be the modus operandi, results are
encouraging even in TB treatment. Homeopathy is safe and cost
effective. It is effective too, can be judged from my published case
reports.13,14,15 Homeopathy could also be used as a supportive therapy
in the same settings of DOTS.
References:
1 Prahlad Kumar, Journey of tuberculosis control movement in India: NTP to RNTCP, Indian J tuberc 2005; 52:63-71.
2 Ganapati Mudur, News, Private doctors in India prescribe wrong tuberculosis drugs, BMJ 1998;317:904.
3 Chakraborty A K, Epidemiology of tuberculosis: Current status in India, Indian Journal of Medical Research, Oct 2004.
4
Chopra,Puneet, Meena L S, and Singh Yogendra. New drug targets for
Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Indian Journal of Medical Research. Jan
2003.
5 WHO Report 2006, Global Tuberculosis control, Country profile, India
6 Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Surveillance Report. Reported Tuberculosis in US, 200. Atlanta, GA:CDC, 2000.
7 M.M.Singh, Fifty Eighth National Conference on Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases: A brief review, Indian J Tuberc 2004;51:99-101
8 Editorial, Extra-Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Coming Out of the Shadows, Indian J Tuberc 2004; 51: 189-190
9
H.S. Lee, J.Y. Oh, J.H. Lee, C.G. Yoo, C-T. Lee, Y.W. Kim, S.K. Han,
Y-S. Shim and J-J. Yim; Response of pulmonary tuberculomas to
anti-tuberculous treatment; Eur Respir J 2004; 23:452-455.
10
Goyal K.K, Does World needs Integrated Medicine to combat
Tuberculosis?,
http://www.stoptb.org/material/news/press/KGoyal.010312.htm
11
Christopher Dye, Geoffrey P Garnett, Karen Sleeman, Brian G Williams
Prospects for worldwide tuberculosis control under the WHO DOTS
strategy, Lancet 1998; 352: 1886-1891
12
Central TB Division, Directorate General of Health Services Ministry of
Health & family Welfare, New Delhi. TB India 2003; 16-46.
13
Goyal K K, case report Pulmonary Tuberculosis, Simile (A newsletter of
the Faculty of Homeopathy, London) April 1994; 2/4: 14-16
14 Goyal K K, case report Collapsed lung with Empyema, Simile (A newsletter of the Faculty of Homeopathy, London) April 1996; 9-12
15 Goyal K K, Two Cases of Pulmonary TB treated with Homeopathy, Homeopathy (2002) 91; 43-46
|
