BENGALURU: Hospitals in the city continue to battle with a record number of cases of mucormycosis, or black fungus, with the most crucial anti-fungal drug — Amphotericin-B — being provided in “trickles” from the government. Hospitals, however, agree that government control of the drug is necessary to avoid hoarding and misuse.The Centre on Thursday allocated 5,190 vials of Amphotericin-B to Karnataka.
“There was zero availability of Amphotericin-B in the hospital till Wednesday morning, when we received 40 vials of the drug from the government. On Thursday evening, the vials were exhausted and we are back to zero stock of Amphotericin-B. In the last two weeks we have received 63 murcomycosis patients. Of them, 55 have been operated upon and six have passed away,” said Dr Sanjiv Lewin, chief of medical services, St Johns Medical College & Hospital. He said in the absence of Amphotericin-B, the hospital is administering Posaconazole to patients, but there is a shortage of even this drug. “We have received 180 doses of Posaconazole from the government on Wednesday and we are now left with 40 doses,” he said.
Surgical debridement accompanied with Amphotericin-B is key to controlling the infection. Nearly a century-old-disease, which was considered rare during the pre-Covid time, is now a medical surge with uncontrolled blood sugar and indiscriminate use of immuno-suppressant drugs to treat Covid patients emerging as the main reasons behind the rise in black fungus cases.“We hardly used to see three to five cases in a year. Smaller hospitals may not have come across even a single case before the pandemic. Today, we have 35 cases in the hospital and we are getting Amphotericin-B in trickles from the government,” said Dr Raman, consultant ENT specialist, Manipal Hospital, Old Airport Road.
Lack of Amphotericin-B makes treatment incomplete. “We do good surgeries, but feel disgusted at the end in the absence of the important arm of treatment,” said Dr Raman.“From 3-4 cases a year before Covid, we have recently operated on 70 patients in the hospital. The drugs are not freely available,” said Dr Susheen Dutt, consultant ENT specialist, Fortis Hospital. “It was an uncommon infection before Covid. We hardly got 30 cases in a year since the 1990s. In the last two weeks, the hospital has got 63 patients,” said Dr Lewin.
