Poor access to anti-fungal drugs: PGI doctor

Chandigarh: Global Action Fund for Fungal Infection (GAFFI), where medical mycology division of department of medical microbiology, PGI is a party, co-ordinated a ‘first of its kind’ series, which was published in the prestigious journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, on Tuesday. The series gives new insights into the breadth of fungal diseases and a call to action for world health bodies to prevent millions of infections each year.

The series focuses on the global inequalities in treatment. Prof Arunaloke Chakrabarti of PGI, who is author of two papers, said “Fungal infection rate in India is very high, but large number of patients do not have access to anti-fungal drugs. There are several conditions that allow these infections to thrive in India: the large economically deprived populations with malnutrition, limited access to health care, improper antibiotic stewardship practices and steroid use, over the counter availability of these drugs add to this problem. Natural disasters like tsunami and earthquake predispose to large land upheavals leading to high spore counts in the atmosphere and implantion of saprophytic fungi from soil due to injury during disaster”.

Prof Denning of Manchester University, UK, said: “The massive advances in fungal disease and understanding over the last two decades should have resulted in much better outcomes – but sadly not in many countries.” Prof Juan Luis Rodriguez Tudela, a WHO consultant from Spain, said: “Improvements in patient outcomes require changes in all part of the health care ‘ecosystem’, notably clinical training, access to and resource for fungal diagnostics, access to affordable antifungal therapy. A major public health response is called for.”

According to the researchers, there has been a complete absence of proposals or commentary on integration of fungal diseases into health care systems. Authors of the papers in the series have been brought together from six continents.