Mumbai: A prolonged shortage of cartridges used in rapid tuberculosis tests has severely disrupted the city’s capacity to detect drug-resistant TB, forcing healthcare workers to fall back on slower, older diagnostic methods that can take months to yield results.
With cartridges for the CBNAT (Cartridge-Based Nucleic Acid Amplification Test) unavailable for weeks, samples are being divided between TrueNat molecular tests and conventional sputum smear microscopy. This has significantly reduced testing speed in a city that reports several thousand drug-resistant TB cases every year.
“With CBNAT, we can process four samples at a time and get results in less than two hours,” said a health worker at a TB treatment centre. “The TrueNat machine takes about the same time for just one sample, which means far fewer patients can be diagnosed in a day.”
Medical staff warned that delayed diagnosis results in critical delays in initiating appropriate treatment. Adding to the challenge, falcon tubes used for sputum collection are also out of stock. As a result, staff have been using alternative containers, increasing the risk of infection transmission.
An official from the TB department said the cartridges are supplied by the Central TB Division under the Union Health Ministry, but deliveries have been halted for the past couple of months.
Dr Daksha Shah, executive health officer, said a senior Union government official visited the city late last week. “We were assured that supplies would be streamlined soon. If delays persist, we may consider local procurement,” she said.
