Chandigarh, December 10
Oxford Immunotec Limited, a spin-off company of University of Oxford, has developed a revolutionary new test for identifying people suffering from tuberculosis (TB), one of the deadliest social diseases of the world. The new test is based on discoveries made over the past seven years at the University of Oxford by Dr Ajit Lalvani and collaborators at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England. It has been developed to replace the existing skin test which is more than a century old but still in use because until now there was no better way of diagnosing the infection.
The new test radically improves the speed and accuracy with which the disease can be identified.
Alarmed by the rate at which TB, which kills more people than any other single infectious disease worldwide, was growing, the WHO in 1993 took the unique step of declaring it to be a world emergency. The WHO estimates that each year eight million new cases of TB occur worldwide and approximately three million person die from the disease.
“India unfortunately accounts for nearly 25 per cent of the global burden of TB,” says Dr Sarvinder Gandhok, a city-based doctor, who had after conducting a clinical study, warned the Chandigarh Administration that the disease was assuming epidemic proportions in the Union Territory.
Though the Health Department initially dismissed his warnings as “exaggerated” it subsequently relented as none other than the Administrator, Lieut-Gen JFR Jacob (retd), expressed his concern over the alarming rate at which this infectious disease was spreading its tentacles in the city and the surrounding areas.
Dr Ajit Lalvani, a doctor of Indian origin, was in the news last year as he funded the aerial search of a missing British boy in the Himachal area after a skydiving mishap. As a lead researcher since 1998, he used the Oxford Immunotec rapid TB blood test in double-blinded randomised studies to prove its effectiveness in over 2,000 TB patients and healthy controls in eight different countries.
The publication of the results from these studies has generated tremendous interest from clinicians and TB experts the world over. The studies demonstrate that this new test is a radical improvement on the current skin test, and importantly, unlike the skin test it works well in people with weaker immune systems, such as children, the elderly and those immunosuppressed with diseases like HIV.
Dr Peter Wrighton-Smith, CEO of Oxford Immunotec, said,” We are extremely excited about this new test which we believe will revolutionise TB control. This test is needed as TB is resurging in the developed world like never before and already parts of the UK have TB rates as high as India. The huge amount of clinical data gathered to date proves this technology works and we are already looking to apply it to other diseases where the cellular immune response is critical such as HIV hepatitis C and cancer.”
Dr Gandhok says that the TB belt in Chandigarh and the surrounding areas covers all labour colonies, the Industrial Area and unauthorised slums. As many as 30 per cent of all patients with cough and fever for more than three weeks were suffering from pulmonary TB. To check its spread, each case of TB should be reported and registered for regular treatment. Surveys should be conducted in all TB-prone areas and a special public awareness campaign should be launched.
The situation is no better in either Punjab or Haryana.
