BMC appoints new TB officer for pilot project on drug resistance

The civic body on Saturday appointed Dr Mini Khetarpal as the Mumbai Tuberculosis officer, who will help roll out the first pilot project to control drug resistant TB in the city.

The civic body on Saturday appointed Dr Mini Khetarpal as the Mumbai Tuberculosis officer, who will help roll out the first pilot project to control drug resistant TB in the city.

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Khetarpal is the deputy executive health officer with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Additional municipal commissioner Manisha Mhaiskar said Khetarpal worked on BMC's malaria control programme in G-south ward (Worli to Haji Ali) last year. "We have appointed 25 TB officers for 24 wards. An extra officer has been appointed to step in, in case of contingencies," said Mhaiskar.

Last month, BMC announced the pilot TB project after Hinduja Hospital in Mahim announced that it had detected 12 patients with extremely drug resistant TB.

Khetarpal will be in charge of the project, Mumbai Blueprint, in which each of the 24 wards in the city will be treated as a district under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP). Earlier, there were only six such districts in the city.

"We are planning to strengthen Sewree TB Hospital and Dr Khetarpal will concentrate on the expansion programme in the city," said Dr Anil Bandivadekar, executive health officer, BMC.

The BMC plans to increase the number of beds to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in Sewree TB Hospital from 44 to 90 beds. Besides, they intend to equip the hospital with line probe assay (LPA) that can diagnose MDR-TB in two days.