"We are going to see more outbreaks like monkeypox or zika virus in coming times," says Dr Randeep Guleria

By Shalini Bhardwaj
New Delhi [India], August 29 : Chairman of Institute of Internal Medicine Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at Medanta and Former AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria on Thursday stated that India is one of the high-burden countries as far as tuberculosis is concerned and a lot of measures have been taken in the private and government sector regarding it. He further added that in the coming times, we are going to witness more outbreaks like monkeypox.
Speaking exclusively to ANI, Dr Guleria said, "India is one of the high-burden countries as far as tuberculosis is concerned, a lot of action has been taken in the private and government sector regarding this... a lot of trials have been done on tuberculosis vaccines, hopefully, we should have a vaccine in the coming years...there is a need to look at newer and better treatment regiments...So active case finding. There's also a need to look at newer and better treatment regimens, especially for drug-resistant tuberculosis so that we can have shorter regimens, that patients can take them. So if we can have a six-month or less regimen for what we call drug-resistant TB, it would be better."
Speaking on the large number of outbreaks caused by the virus in recent times, Dr Guleria said, "Over the last 24 years of this century, we have seen a large number of outbreaks, including SARS, COVID, two pandemics, and H1N1. We have outbreaks now, Monkeypox, and other outbreaks like the Zika virus outbreaks. All of these are basically because of viruses the species of animals or birds and have started coming to humans. So there is a need to, of course, understand that because of climate change, travelling, and environment encroachment, we are going to see more and more such outbreaks."
He further emphasised that preparation is needed and that can be achieved by pro-active surveillance.
"We have to be prepared for that and to do so, we need to have active surveillance. So that we can pick up any outbreak or any abnormality happening early and contain it. We have done that when there were outbreaks of Nipah virus in Kerala similarly. We should do it at a national level. So there is an outbreak. We have a team ready to contain it, diagnose it, and to be able to properly manage it. And, of course, there has to be a lot of focus on research, from drugs to vaccines for these new infections, which are coming up," he said.