MUMBAI: Some forms of tuberculosis are so expensive to treat that an average Mumbai family could spend over half its annual income on a single patient.

Mumbai, 13 May 2016: On Thursday , the World Health Organisation (WHO) gave its nod for an affordable drug combination that cuts down time needed to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis from 24 months to around nine months.

MUMBAI: Here's why drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) breeds freely in Mumbai: Patients don't get appropriate medication.

MUMBAI: Bedaquiline, the first anti-tuberculosis drug manufactured after rifampicin almost 50 years ago, has been effective in five Indian patients, shows a new study by a city hospital. But it cannot be prescribed to other drug-resistant TB patients because the Indian government, unlike the West and the World Health Organization, has yet to approve its use.

"The Indian government continues to deny that there are drug stockouts. Innocent children are dying when people continue to say that there are no stockouts."

MUMBAI: Shasikala Sawant (name changed), a 22-year-old government worker, lived for barely six months after being diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) in a clinic near her Vasai house.