Patna: Top hospitals in Bihar are facing an acute shortage of drugs used to treat deadly mucormycosis, also known as black fungus, which has been declared an epidemic in the state.
The crisis of drugs comes amid the black fungus cases registering an alarming rise in the state in the past fortnight. The state has reported a total of 369 cases till Sunday, according to an official report. The disease has already claimed 23 lives so far.
The shortage of antifungal injection at two hospitals in Patna — All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) — has caused further trouble to the patients battling black fungus. Both these hospitals have been selected as centres of excellence for treatment of back fungus by the Bihar government.
“Our stock of Amphotericin-B, antifungal injection, being supplied by the health department exhausted on May 28. Since then no injection has been given to the patients,” nodal officer for COVID-19 at AIIMS, Patna, Dr Sanjeev Kumar, told the media on Monday.
According to him, the daily requirement of this particular medicine at AIIMS, Patna, alone is 500 vials while each patient needs to be administered 5-7 vials of the drug per day for at least 10-12 days. What is further worrying is that this particular drug is also not available in the market, thus making the battle for survival tougher for black fungus patients. 85 patients are admitted to this hospital.
“The casualty rate among such patients may increase if the necessary doses of the medicine are not administered on time,” additional professor of Otorhinolaryngology (ENT) Dr Kranti Bhavana said.
IGIMS, another prominent government health facility located in Patna, has also been reeling under a severe shortage of the drug. IGIMS director Dr Krishna Gopal said they had sought immediate supply of 3,000 vials of the drug on May 26 but were given only 350 vials on May 28.
“The entire stock of vials was exhausted on the same day. Since then we haven’t received a single vial of this drug which is also not available in the open market. The scarcity of the drug has disrupted the treatment of patients admitted to our hospital,” Gopal told the media. A total of 98 patients were admitted to this hospital till Sunday night.
“We are constantly supplying this drug to the hospitals yet the Centre needs to increase its supply,” Bihar health minister Mangal Pandey said. He demanded that the existing quota for supply of this medicine to Bihar must be increased to help the patients.
The surging cases of black fungus have become a matter of concern for health experts with an average 20 cases being reported every day in Bihar. The first case in the state was reported on May 17 and in the next 14 days, their number has now climbed to 369.
India has recorded more than 11,700 cases of black fungus so far with Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh reporting the highest number of cases. A maximum of 2,859 cases have been reported from Gujarat, followed by 2,770 cases in Maharashtra and 768 cases in Andhra Pradesh.
Similarly, 752 cases have been reported from Madhya Pradesh, 744 from Telangana and 701 from Uttar Pradesh. More than 400 cases have been reported from Haryana, Karnataka and Rajasthan.
