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Today’s episode was on the spread TB in India. Aamir highlighted how TB can spread and what it does to one’s body. Read on to know more…
Aamir Khan was lauded for highlighting the bold topic of homosexuality last week. This week, the perfectionist Khan talked about the dreaded disease of TB or Tuberculosis, which is affecting lives of several people in India. Did he do justice to the topic? We tell you…
The Good
TB is a disease which has been in India since ages, but people are not fully aware of its ill-effects. However, Aamir aptly brought the topic into the much needed focus.
It was sensible on Aamir’s part to put forth the topic through story telling. With a doctor sharing a tale about his sister (also doing her MBBS) who passed away at the age of 24 due to TB, one would definitely realise that TB is certainly not a small disease. Joining him was Prathamesh and Deepti, who shared stories about their struggle with TB.
Personal experiences aside, a concept makes sense a whole lot more when put forth by professionals. Dr Zarir Udwadia from Hinduja Hospital brought forward the various types of TB one can suffer. For example, there is multi-drug resistance tuberculosis the treatment and medications are stronger and much expensive as opposed to normal TB. Worse than this is XDR or extremely drug resistant TB or TDR — totally drug resistant TB. On these, none of the medications work.
Dr Anurag Bharghav said that to fight TB, we first need to look at facts which lead to it. One of them is malnutrition which affects 36% of Indian women. In New York too TB cases rose in the ’90s. To tackle this, the government increased the funds for treatment of TB and volunteers went from street to street to provide medication to the citizens. A nurse called Rebecca also spoke about her journey during this period in NY. She had to provide medication to drug dealers, criminals, etc. during this time but her aim was to make sure they got it on time without caring about their profession.
Problems in government’s TB treatment was also highlighted. RNTCP – a free service to detect TB and treat it. It has benefited over 1 crore people as of now. But is it effective on the advanced levels of TB? A doctor highlights the fact that these days, TB spreads very quickly and it is difficult to diagnose what kind of tuberculosis it is. Here are a few problems in government’s program of treatment of TB at the grass root level: Alternate Day Therapy, Timing of DOTS centre (the timings are between 9 am to 2 pm to take the medications), shortage of dosage, poor monitoring and of course corruption.
Superstar Salman Khan, who is quite close to Aamir was also on the show today and shared with the audience how his grandmother was also suffering from TB. His father was only 7 years old. She used to go to Nanital for her treatment and one day after coming back from the treatment, she was unable to recognise her own son i.e. Salman’s father. Salman also helps several TB patients by providing them financial help. He even felicitated several volunteers who are working towards eradicating TB from India.
The Bad
There wasn’t any. We have often seen how the show gets repetitive, but this episode didn’t.
Verdict
Today’s episode was an engaging one. it was a commendable attempt by Aamir to bring forward the much ignored topic of TB. What say peeps?
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