DOTS-DIRECTLY OBSERVED TREATMENT, SHORT COURSE (T.B)

 The WHO-recommended Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course (DOTS) strategy was launched formally as Revised National TB Control programme in India in 1997 after pilot testing from 1993-1996.

 In terms of population coverage, India now has the second largest DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short course) programme in the world. However, India's DOTS programme is the fastest expanding programme, and the largest in the world in terms of patients initiated on treatment, placing more than 100,000 patients on treatment every month.

 Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by a Bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is spread through the air by a person suffering from TB. A single patient can infect 10 or more people in a year.

 In India today, two deaths occur every three minutes from tuberculosis (TB). But these deaths can be prevented. With proper care and treatment, TB patients can be cured and the battle against TB can be won

 Multi-drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (MDRTB) - MDRTB refers to strains of the bacterium which are proven in a laboratory to be resistant to the two most active anti-TB drugs, isoniazid and rifampicin. Treatment of MDRTB is extremely expensive, toxic, arduous, and often unsuccessful.

 DOTS has been proven to prevent the emergence of MDRTB, and also to reverse the incidence of MDRTB where it has emerged. MDRTB is a tragedy for individual patients and a symptom of poor TB management. The best way to confront this challenge is to improve TB treatment and implement DOTS.

 Beginning 1999, the Tuberculosis Research Centre, Chennai in collaboration with the National Tuberculosis Institute, Bangalore, initiated drug resistance surveys in different parts of the country using the WHO/IUATLD guidelines.