A three-day seminar from December 2 to 4 was held on 'Emerging Trends in the Diagnosis & Experimental Chemotherapy of Tuberculosis' at the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Mohali. The event was organised in association with the department of pharmaceuticals (DoP) and Harvard School of Public Health, USA which was inaugurated by Ashok Kumar, secretary, DoP.
Speaking on the occasion, Ashok Kumar said that TB infects approximately 32 per cent of world’s population and kills over two million people, annually. The emergence of multi-drug resistant strains of M tuberculosis and the apparent synergy between the HIV and TB are the burgeoning dreaded dimensions of human TB. India is the highest TB burden country in the world, and for the year 2008, the prevalence of TB has been estimated to be 3.8 million cases.
Every day, more than 5000 people develop TB and nearly 1000 people die, resulting in two deaths every three minutes. In India, TB exacts a devastating social cost: more than 300, 000 children abstain from school because their parents suffer from TB, and more than 100, 000 women with TB are rejected by their families. For morbidity alone, the estimated annual direct and indirect cost of TB to India stands at US$ 3 billion. Most of the presently available drugs for the treatment of TB are nearly 50 years old and, unfortunately, no new anti-TB drug has been introduced in the market over last more than 30 years. The presently used drugs (isoniazid, rifampicin, pyrizinamide, ethambutol and streptomycin) are all fraught with several drawbacks, and have to be administered over six months or more. This usually leads to non-compliance and results in the emergence of drug-resistant strains.
He added that NIPER had a total of 94 research papers published, five patents filed and one data base has been created in the area of TB. This highly competitive achievement has given NIPER TB Research programme international recognition and has provided opportunities to work with international researchers for the discovery of new anti-TB drugs. He affirmed that NIPER and Harvard will exchange research scholars and masters’ students in the coming year and both the institutions will conduct jointly the seminar on different topics which are relevant to not only India but also to the whole world.
Earlier professor P Rama Rao, director, NIPER said that NIPER has been awarded an Indo-European Union (FP7) collaborative project 'New Approaches to Target Tuberculosis'. He added that NIPER is actively involved in Bio-availability, absorption, permeability and metabolic studies of existing anti-TB drugs. Extensive work on Fixed Dose Combination (FDC) products has been carried out at NIPER by WHO approved protocols. As a result of this, the institute has filed five patents in the area of TB and published 93 peer review journals/papers and the information data base is given in the Abstract book of the seminar. He said that NIPER is an Anchor institute, which is looking for collaborative research projects both at national and international levels and is also ready to enter into MOUs in various fields of pharmaceutical sciences. He thanked the faculty from Harvard School of Public Health for coming all the way from USA to interact with NIPER faculty and planning to start NIPER-Harvard Tuberculosis initiative which will herald a new phase in this direction.
Presenting key note speech on ‘Importance of Tuberculosis Research’, professor Barry Bloom, Distinguished University Service Professor, Harvard School of Public Health, USA said that, currently ~2.5 billion People Infected with TBM, 10 per cent will develop disease over a lifetime, 15 to 33 per cent of AIDS patients die of TB and case fatality rate of untreated TB is 50 per cent. Around 80 per cent of Global TB is in 22 high burden countries, India is the highest TB burden country which is equal to one fifth of all TB.