LONDON, Oct 27: Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has made a passionate appeal to end the “stigma and discrimination” associated with tuberculosis and called for better treatment of the disease for everyone.
In a video message aired at the 47th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Liverpool earlier this week, the 74-year-old actor also stressed on the importance of ending the “stigma and discrimination associated with TB” in his capacity as ambassador for the “Call to Action for TB-Free India”.
“Each of us has a role to play. We need our political leaders to commit at the highest level, in each of our countries, to provide the much-needed services to the most marginalised and vulnerable populations.
“We need to pool our resources to find effective solutions,” Bachchan, himself a TB survivor, said in his message.
“We need new diagnostics that make it easy to detect TB and new drugs that can shorten the course of treatment. And most importantly, we need an effective vaccine,” he added.
The conference, which concludes on Saturday, attended by nearly 4,000 delegates from 130 countries, is themed around Confronting Resistance: Fundamentals to Innovations.
Drawing on personal experience, Bachchan spoke of how he was diagnosed with TB of the spine in the year 2000, at a time when he was hosting ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’.
He underwent rigorous treatment and was able to recover and resume work.
However, he pointed to many in India who do not have access to the same quality of care.
Global health experts at the conference called for initiation of greater efforts in India to deal with Tuberculosis (TB).
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), India is home to 2.8 million people with TB.
An estimated 10.4 million new TB cases were recorded worldwide in 2015, with India as one of the six nations which accounted for 60 per cent of the new cases in 2015.
Six countries that accounted for 60 per cent of the new cases included India, Indonesia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa.
A new treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis patients, that reported a success rate of 82 per cent in a study, was hailed as a “breakthrough” at the UK meet.
Results showed patients across nine African countries responded remarkably well to the nine-month treatment.
Of the 1,006 TB sufferers who participated in the observational study of the treatment, all of whom were all resistent to TB medicine rifampicin, 734 were deemed fully cured and in a further 87 cases the treatment appeared to have worked.
“These results have now been replicated in many different settings and with a large number of patients, showing conclusively that this is the most effective treatment for drug-resistant TB discovered to date,” said Valerie Schwoebel, the Union’s programme manager for Francophone Africa.
The Union worked alongside the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy, and local researchers to carry out the study of the treatment. (PTI)
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