Tamil Nadu has become the first state to implement a tuberculosis (TB) death prediction model in the country. This model predicts the probability of deaths among adults with TB and has also integrated it with the existing state-wide application, TB SeWA, which triages them at diagnosis.

Through the model, TN aims to reduce the average time for TB patients from diagnosis to getting admitted to the hospital. Dr Asha Frederick, State TB Officer of Tamil Nadu, said that through this model the mortality rate can be brought down further.

The TB death predictive model has been developed by ICMR’s National Institute of Epidemiology (NIE) and has been added to Tamil Nadu’s existing TB SeWA (Severe TB Web Application), which has been in use since 2022 under the state’s differentiated care model initiative Tamil Nadu – Kasanoi Erappila Thittam (TN-KET).

What is tuberculosis?

Caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, this is a contagious bacterial infection that primarily affects the lungs, but can also spread to other parts of the body.

“How this feature addition is helpful is that the predicted probability of death varies widely between a ‘severely ill’ and ‘not severely ill’ patient. The predicted probability for a severely ill adult with TB death ranges from 10 per cent to as high as 50 per cent, depending on how many of the conditions are present. In contrast, for patients not flagged as ‘severely ill’, the predicted probability drops sharply to just 1-4 per cent,” explained Dr Hemant Shewade, a senior Scientist at NIE to PTI.