Raju Kumar
Throughout the world T.B has been recognized as a dangerous disease. Although disease exhibits its direct relation with poverty and malnourishment but social inequalities make it more severe. In such conditions, women facing social inequalities are more prone to TB. After becoming TB patient, women are already facing humiliation of social discrimination, forced to tolerate the soreness of exclusion. If women are found suffering from TB, the chances to get family support for treatment and mental well being are comparatively much lesser in comparison to men.
Recently released world report 2013 of World Health Organization, the situation of TB in India portrays such a picture to us. India have world’s largest number of TB and MDR TB. The number of TB patients was 465 per lakhs in 1990, which came down to 230 per one lakh population. And the number of TB patient who died of TB reduced to 22 per one lakh in 2012 from 38 per lakh in 1990. But this doesn’t mean that the number of people dying of TB is very minimal. WHO reported that over 95 percent of TB deaths occur in low and middle income countries. According to India’s Census 2011, the total population of India is 12102 lakhs that means every year 266244 people die from TB.
This indicates that in every 2 minutes, one person died from TB in our country. Its true that there is moderate improvement in situation, as previously on an average 2 person used to die from TB in every three minutes. But on the other hand, new cases of TB are increasing which means the number of TB patients per lakh population is increasing. The number of patient for MDR TB which is very dangerous form of TB is rising. According to 2012 report the total number of MDR TB patient in India has reached up to 17373.
Among the TB patients the number of women victimized of the disease is too high. Therefore is it is imperative to look at the severity of the problem from women’s perspective. It can be especially dangerous for women who have weaker immune systems. Anemia among women of age group 15-49 years is much higher. NFHS-3 indicates that 36 per cent of Indian women are chronically undernourished and 55 per cent are anemic. More than half of all married women are anemic and one-third of them are malnourished.
Fearing the social exclusion, the patient suffering from TB does not want to disclose it. And if the sufferer is woman then she is not only excluded by the society but she also got debarred from the family. When a man suffers from TB, whole family come together to support and treat him but when a woman is suffering from TB, she usually doesn’t get the expected support from her own family members. On the other hand she is often expelled from the family. Although exclusion of women is categorized a violence against women, but still it fails to fetch attention on the issue. In a situation when women are in utmost need of family’s support and empathy, she found herself alone. There is not only delay in the treatment of women suffering from TB, but often family is not sensitive to provide her timely doses of recommended medicines i.e. DOTS. Any negligence in recommended dose results into MDR TB, which is difficult to cure. Thus in lack of proper treatment women suffering from TB pushed to death although they are in need of more care and attention from the family.
Various studies reveal that the efforts to prevent and control TB are insufficient to raise awareness at the family level. Because of this, the other members of the family also are prone to diseases when one member of the family got into its grip. For the prevention of the disease it is essential to develop measure that reached directly to community and household level in place of DOTS Centre or Aaganwadi centre which will work to spread awareness especially for treatment and care of TB affected women. Because of social customs, women spend most of their time within their homes, due to which the children of TB affected women have more chances to get TB infections. Thus it is high time when the family should understand that to control the dangerous disease and to protect women’s dignity and to reinforce our commitment towards violence against women it is important to provide them with better social and family environment instead of leaving them alone. (IPA)
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