New Delhi, July 11, 2023 (PPI-OT): Thousands of Kashmiris languishing in Indian jails are vulnerable to contract tuberculosis (TB), as a global study warned that prisoners in India are five times more at risk of developing infectious disease than the general population. The global study published in the Lancet Public Health journal analyzed data from 193 out of 195 countries between 2000 and 2019 with the help of an international team of researchers who estimated the rate of TB in incarcerated persons for the first time. The study found that the incidence of TB in India was 1,076 cases per 1, 00,000 (one lakh) persons in prisons. The country’s TB incidence for the year 2021 is 210 per 1 lakh population, according to the Global TB Report released by World Health Organisation (WHO) last year.
Approximately, 125,105 (1.2 lakh) of the 11 million people in prisons globally developed TB in 2019 – a rate of 1,148 cases per 100,000 people per year. This is significantly higher than the global incidence rate among all persons – 127 cases per 100,000 people per year, they said. However, the case detection rate was very low-just 53 per cent of all TB cases in prisons globally, according to the study.
The researchers found a strong relationship between country-level tuberculosis incidence rates and overcrowding in prisons. “This connection between TB and overcrowding suggests that efforts to limit the number of people who are detained may be one potential public health tool to combat the TB epidemic in prisons,” study lead Leonardo Martinez from Boston University in the US said in a statement.
“These findings give us a much clearer picture of tuberculosis in prisons than we’ve ever had before,” said Anthony D Harries, senior advisor at the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. In 2021, an estimated 10.6 million people fell ill with TB worldwide while 1.6 million people died from the disease, according to WHO.
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