TB, lack of money, ignorance ravage HSC student’s dream

MUMBAI, March 8: While most 16-year-olds are taking their HSC exams, Sarita Khetal is battling for breath in a ward in the Tuberculosis H...

MUMBAI, March 8: While most 16-year-olds are taking their HSC exams, Sarita Khetal is battling for breath in a ward in the Tuberculosis Hospital in Sewri. Sarita, an HSC student from New Girls College, Thane, has carried TB in her lungs since July last year. Doctors say she is fighting a losing battle.

Sarita, who scored 65 per cent in her SSC exams, is a keen student and would have been among the thousands streaming into exam centres had it not been for TB, her mother told Express Newsline. But it isn’t just disease that has put a temporary halt to Sarita’s dreams of education. Diagnosed as having TB last year, Sarita was prescribed drugs for treatment. But the family could not afford to buy some of the more expensive drugs. Result: Sarita was forced to neglect her condition, and she later had to be admitted to KEM Hospital. She couldn’t complete her treatment course there either, and was admitted on February 18 at Sewree.

The TB incidence in Mumbai is around two-three per cent of the population,of which a majority are from society’s lowest rung, said Dr KC Mohanty, professor and head of department of chest medicine, KG Somaiya Medical College. In fact, one of the single most important factors preventing several patients from completing their treatment course is their position on the economic ladder. Drugs are expensive, and many patients cannot afford the high protein diets needed to supplement their treatment. Daily wage earners prefer to step out of a treatment course rather than give up their earnings. Also, several TB patients who come to big cities like Mumbai for treatment often drop out midway during treatment and return to their home towns or villages.

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According to Dr Mohanty, patients can be treated under a direct observation scheme, under which health workers monitor the course of treatment. But the more pressing issue, of a disease that physically and financially drains patients, offers no pat solutions.

Sarita’s mother said one of her daughters died a couple of years ago of the samedisease. Yet, she says she could do little to cure Sarita. Employed at a tailor’s shop at Ghatkopar, she cannot stay at home most of the time to care for her ailing child. Now, a local chemist has offered to give Sarita free medicine so that she can be saved and can at least appear for the next HSC exams. But for the rest of those patients, it will take more than freebies to recover from TB.