Is it ethical to provide TB treatment without quality counselling?
How ethical is it to providing treatment for anti-TB drug resistance without quality counseling? The treatment literacy, infection control, toxicity and side-effects related to the treatment, adherence and a range of other issues need to be addressed in counseling sessions, believes the activist from the West Bengal Network of people living with HIV (BNP+) in India. This indeed provides a food for thought for delegates of the 3rd Stop TB Partners Forum (Brazil: 23-25 March 2009) and the high-level ministerial meeting on drug-resistant TB (Beijing, China: 1-3 April 2009). For instance, a member of BNP+ (name withheld) was diagnosed of TB in 2004, but due to anti-TB drug-stock out for a week at the DOTS centre, he was asked to buy medicines from the pharmacy, which were beyond his economic means. Due to treatment interruptions possibly, only later he found out in a hospital where he was admitted for AIDS-related care, that he is suspected to having developed resistance to anti-TB drugs.
