Tuberculosis is taking its toll in Poland. In patients with some forms of pulmonary tuberculosis and extrapulmonary tuberculosis, deaths occur despite treatment, doctors are alarmed. Some patients cannot be saved because they go to the hospital too late, with a chronic form of the disease.
In 2020, 474 people died from tuberculosis in Poland, compared to 456 a year earlier. According to the Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases, in 2021, 9.7 people per 100,000 of the population fell ill with tuberculosis. residents. It is difficult to cure the disease if we are dealing with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, that is, tuberculosis that cannot be cured, the doctors explain.
Tuberculosis can kill even in a week
Tuberculosis can progress rapidly in immunocompromised people. distribution, the so-called miliary form of tuberculosis with dissemination to the lungs, often also multi-organ, it can kill within 1-2 weeks, leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome. A form of acute progressive tuberculosis, once known as galloping consumption or serous pneumonia, is also life-threatening. This undiagnosed form of TB can be fatal within 1 to 3 months due to lung damage, bleeding, or septic shock.
Multidrug resistant tuberculosis
The most powerful commonly used anti-TB drugs do not work for multidrug-resistant TB: isoniazid as well as rifampicin and broad-spectrum antibiotics, i.e. fluoroquinolones. New countercurrent drug doesn’t work either bedaquiline and an antibacterial antibiotic belonging to a new group of drugs linezolid.
Expensive drugs recommended for the treatment of multidrug-resistant TB will be available.
Treatment for multidrug-resistant TB has so far been funded by hospitals or imported through targeted imports, which has limited their use and discouraged out-of-hospital treatment. The refugee crisis caused by the war in Ukraine led the World Health Organization to donate such medicines to Poland. In addition, it is planned to introduce a pilot project containing a solution that has not yet been applied in Poland: the introduction of outpatient treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and remote monitoring of drug intake. This is especially important in view of the fact that the refugees refrained from going to a medical facility for fear of being hospitalized for many months.
The incidence of tuberculosis in Ukraine, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) for 2020, was about 44.6 people per 100 thousand. inhabitants and it was one of the highest European figures.
Source: Wprost
