Satyamev Jayate - Jinhe Desh Ki Fikr Hai

Guest Profiles

TB today is a looming crisis in our country. A ticking time bomb. To understand this phenomena, especially that of MDR TB, we spoke to a host of doctors, experts, patients, survivors and activists to tell us how and why we need to tackle this disease on a priority.

 

Dr Shekhar Khandare is the brother of the late Dr Samidha Khandare, who lost her life in six months after getting TB. Samidha was 24 years old and was interning at Sion Hospital, Mumbai. Shekhar actively spreads awareness on TB and hopes that hospitals and medical institutions work towards improving the working and living conditions of doctors and interns.
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Dr Zarir Udwadia is a consultant chest physician at Hinduja Hospital. He established its Chest Medicine Department in 1992. His research group was the first to publish data on survival of a large cohort of MDR-TB patients treated on an OPD basis in the hospital and he was also the first to report XDR-TB from India. He is actively involved in TB research collaborations with partners from across the globe and has been invited to lecture on TB at the British Thoracic Society and the prestigious Royal Society of Medicine in London. He was also the only Indian invited by the WHO to be on the Guidelines Group of the 4th edition of TB guidelines published in 2010.

Prathamesh Balgi works at ICICI Bank, Mumbai. He is a survivor of multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB and had a near-death experience because of the disease. The ordeal he faced because of TB proved to be the biggest battle of his life. However, his employers were a big financial and emotional support to him and also played a part in ensuring that he did not face stigma at work.

Dr Sheilja Singh is a consultant physician attached to Guru Nanak hospital and Asian Heart Institute in Mumbai. She creates awareness on TB and preventing it, and has been closely interacting with TB patients and their families. She believes that a holistic outlook towards health and disease and promotes functional fitness and adult immunization.
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Dr Lalit Kumar Anande has worked in the Thoracic Surgery Department at the Group of TB Hospitals in Sewri, Mumbai, for 24 years. He is currently working as a Chief Medical Officer in charge of the department. His role is to work out logistics and administrative liaison with higher authorities and deliver the best care and treatment to all patients.
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Sadanand Lanjewar lives in Mumbai and is the father of 16-year-old Nitesh, a Multidrug-resistance TB (MDR TB) patient. In spite of starting treatment early and following the DOTS regimen correctly, his son’s health deteriorated eight months later with half of his lung damaged due to doctors' inability to diagnose him accurately and on time. Today, Mr Lanjewar’s son is on the path to recovery and he hopes that he can resume his studies soon.

Dr Yatin Dholakia, M.D., is a chest physician with a focus on tuberculosis, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR) and HIV/AIDS. Currently, he is Clinical Consultant to The Foundation for Medical Research, Mumbai. He has been National Expert for the Joint Monitoring Mission for RNTCP in 2006 and numerous national policy development workshops. He has experience planning and implementing three Global Fund Projects in India-Urban DOTS Project with Inter Aide, France, TB/HIV coordination project with The Maharashtra State Anti TB Association, and the Graduated Cost Recovery Model for ART delivery, with ARCON. He is also Hon. Secretary and Technical Adviser to The Maharashtra State Anti TB Association.

Dr Muhammed Shaffi is a public health and management specialist who has worked on programmes related to control of polio, child malnutrition and kala-azar and during various disease outbreaks in different parts of India. He was also a medical consultant with a WHO-supported team working on TB control in India. Currently, he is working with the Global Institute of Public Health at Thiruvananthapuram and leads Health Systems Research India Initiative, a public health research and advocacy organization.
Email: | Website: www.hsrii.org

Dr Kuldeep Singh Sachdeva is Additional Deputy Director General at the Central TB Division, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Dr Sachdeva is team leader and nodal officer for programmatic management of drug-resistant TB and diagnostics, including quality assurance of laboratories and laboratory scale-up for newer diagnostics, TB-HIV collaboration, paediatric TB, health system strengthening for TB control, Operations Research for TB control among other responsibilities. He is also a core group member of Global Drug Resistant TB Initiative, Sub-Group of Public Private Partnership of Stop TB Partnership, Geneva and Vice Chair of Regional Green Light Committee of WHO South East Asia region. He has also been a member of a monitoring and evaluation mission for the STOP TB Partnership Challenge Facility, India.
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Dr Soumya Swaminathan is Director of the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, Chennai. A pediatrician by training, she has spent two decades researching TB in children, adults and people with HIV. Her special interests have been in the field of immunology and the impact of nutrition on drug levels and response to treatment. She serves on many national and international bodies, including the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the WHO’s Global TB Department.
Email: | Website: www.nirt.res.in

Dr Anurag Bhargava a physician and epidemiologist, who currently teaches at the Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences in District Dehradun, Uttarakhand. He spent a decade with Jan Swasthya Sahyog, a voluntary organization which runs a rural hospital and community health programme in the tribal areas of Bilaspur district, Chhattisgarh. He has extensive experience of medical and social issues confronting people with TB, and his research has highlighted the interactions between undernutrition and TB. His recent research paper estimating that more than a million new cases of TB can be prevented by addressing undernutrition in adults won him the 2014 British Medical Journal India award for the Research Paper of the Year.
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Rebecca Stevens is a health worker at the New Jersey Medical School Global Tuberculosis Institute. She was one of the health workers who helped control the tuberculosis epidemic of the 1990s in New York City and surrounding areas. Since the last 22 years, Ms Stevens has been overseeing patients in the Directly Observed Therapy programme in the city. Among other aspects, she also takes care of her patients' housing, food and other social needs.

Dr Shelly Batra is the President and Co-Founder of Operation ASHA, which is among the world’s largest NGOs in tuberculosis treatment and prevention. For decades, she has been providing pro-bono life-saving treatments and operations for the needy. She has been selected as a Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2014 by the Schwab Foundation. In addition, she has lectured on global health issues at The University of Chicago, Cambridge, Wellesley College, University of Michigan and UC Berkeley, to name a few.
Email: | Website: www.opasha.org

Sandeep Ahuja, CEO and Co-Founder of Operation ASHA, is a former board member of the Stop TB Partnership (2009–12) where he represented NGOs of developing countries. Before that, he was Additional Commissioner in the Government of India. Mr Ahuja has delivered lectures at leading universities like The University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to name a few.
Email: | Website: www.opasha.org

Deepti Chavan, a survivor of MDR TB, now actively works towards creating awareness about TB prevention so that others do not suffer the way she did. Deepti was forced to drop out of her engineering degree when her health deteriorated. Today, she regularly counsels people with TB and speaks about her experiences on radio, print and TV to inspire patients to keep fighting. Her husband, Neeraj Musale, has been a big support in her battle against TB and encourages her to fight for this cause.
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Mrs Paramjeet Kaur, Mrs Shamsath Beevi S., Dr Jagdish Saini, Mr Meenakshi Sundaram, Mr Dhiraj Kumar Parmar and Mr Krishnachandra Das are dedicated community DOTS providers. They go above and beyond their call of duty to ensure that their patients have their medicine in time. Their selfless service plays a notable role controlling TB across the country.

 

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