India may be staring at a big tuberculosis crisis amid current pandemic

The failure to control tuberculosis has long plagued successive governments in India, which spends just 1.28% of gross domestic product on public health. Health experts have raised concerns that the pandemic has overwhelmed India's precarious healthcare system, with most medical personnel and services pushed into the fight against Covid-19 while placing TB care on the back-burner.

Both Covid 19 and TB has similar symptoms like coughing, sometimes with mucus, chest pains, weakness and fever. As per a reports, people have remained too scared to go to medical facilities or been turned away for reasons ranging from staff shortage to confusion over Covid-19 and TB diagnoses.

The government's TB programme showed registration of new cases between January and June this year dropped by more than 25% compared with the same period in 2019. Under-detection could result in an additional estimated 87,711 TB deaths in 2020, according to a review article co-authored by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease published last month.

The pandemic, however, has some positive impact on TB cases in India. As per experts, new behaviours adopted in the wake of Covid-19, such as wearing masks and social distancing, could help reduce TB, which is spread through coughs and sneezes.