A desperate father has sued Indian government to allow a regulated drug to cure his ailing daughter who’s suffering from extremely drug- resistant tuberculosis or XDR TB, a report in The Hindu says.
According to the report, Shyam Trivedi (name changed) from Patna has dragged the government to court to allow two ‘miracle’ drugs called bedaquiline and delaminid for his 18-year-old wheelchair-bound daughter.
The miracle drugs are not manufactured in India and are given to a patient on a case-by-case basis if the pharmaceutical company is convinced after inspecting a patient’s situation. While as the government has 300 doses of bedaquiline available under a pilot project in five cities, it doesn’t qualify Trivedi’s daughter for it.
The logic behind the restricted availability of the drugs is to avoid “drug-resistance caused by over or indiscriminate use of antibiotics.” According to a report in The National medical experts feel the extra usage of antibiotics in India has spiked the number of drug-resistant TB cases in the country.
A report in The Scroll said Trivedi’s daughter was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2011 and the primary and secondary level treatment spread over months didn’t cure the disease. The prolonging disease has reduced her weight to only 24 kilograms.
Prompting him to obtain the miracle drugs, Trivedi is now running out of time to prove to the government that his daughter is suffering from the XDR TB. Despite her doctors confirming the deadly stage of her disease, the government has asked for test results which could take up to six weeks.
“The court said that only Delhi residents can have access to the drug. Our other option is to approach the company to give us the drug on compassionate grounds — a process that could take another three months. My daughter is dying. I am hoping that the court will ensure that other TB patients do not suffer the same fate,” the father told the The Hindu.
The final hearing of the case will be on Friday.