Author(s)

Suresh Shastri¹, Sharath Burugina Nagaraja^2*, Jaya Prasad Tripathy³, Anil Singarajipur¹, Bharat Bhushan Rewari⁴

¹State TB Office, Revised National TB Control Programme, Bangalore, India.
²ESIC Medical College and PGIMSR, Bangalore, India.
³The Union, South East Asia Office, New Delhi, India.
⁴National AIDS Control Organization, New Delhi, India.

Background: India is a high TB (tuberculosis) burden country. The advent of HIV (Human immunodeficiency virus) and DR-TB (drug resistant TB) has worsened the ongoing TB control efforts. A study was conducted to (a) to determine the duration for developing drug resistant TB after diagnosis of HIV (b) to ascertain the patients status after one year of DR-TB treatment in Karnataka, India. Methods: It is a retrospective cross-sectional study involving review of records and reports at ART (Anti-retroviral treatment) centres and DR-TB centres in Karnataka during the period 2013-2014. Results: The median time from being known as HIV positive to being diagnosed as DR-TB was 1168 days (IQR: 571 - 1955). At the end of 14 months, nearly 39% of patients had died and 49% of patients were on treatment. Conclusion: The National Health programmes should prioritize monitoring of the HIV/TB patients and develop appropriate novel strategies for community involvement.

HIV, DR-TB, Outcomes, Duration

Shastri, S. , Nagaraja, S. , Tripathy, J. , Singarajipur, A. and Rewari, B. (2017) When Does Drug Resistant TB Strike HIV/TB Patients?—A South India Experience. World Journal of AIDS, 7, 34-39. doi: 10.4236/wja.2017.71004.