Tuberculosis (TB) drugs that some people on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment are taking, are resulting in drastic health crises in some parts of the country, we have learnt.

Our investigations have established that some patients are provided with conflicting information on how they are supposed to take ARVs and TB drugs simultaneously resulting into health challenges such as mental disorders, hepatitis, fever and splitting headaches.

While these are said to be synonymous with TB drugs, HIV research experts argue that they can be avoided if patients are given sufficient and correct information.

“Protecting HIV patients from TB attacks is a medically-proved intervention. But what matters is how you handle it so that the patients are not left tormented. In cases where side effects are numerous and drastic, you are supposed to inform the patients about what they should do,” a doctor with a public health facility, who pleaded for anonymity, said.

Some HIV-positive people that we have talked to in Lilongwe and Blantyre have complained that after they started taking ARVs together with TB drugs, their health rapidly deteriorated.

One such patient, Lucy Chikanga of Blantyre, claimed she was being forced to take TB drugs even after complaining that they were resulting in serious health challenges some of which she had never experienced before.

“I have never suffered from TB but I am being given both ARVs and TB drugs apparently because I am living in a TB-prone area.

However, when I reported that I was feeling pain to my health facility, I was warned against stopping taking the TB drugs, having taken them for some months,” Chikanga said.

She added that it was only after she had visited Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital that she was advised to stop taking the TB drugs until a proper assessment of her condition was done.

In response to our questionnaire, the Ministry of Health and Population, through its spokesperson Joshua Malango, said clients on some TB interventions may experience nausea, vomiting and mild itchy skin rash as side effects.

But those that we talked to registered more serious side effects.

Malango said: “Isoniazid Preventive Therapy (IPT) is one of the three interventions of preventing TB in HIV infected clients through provision of anti- TB drugs. Scientific evidence highlights that combining anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and IPT significantly reduces the incidence of TB.

“The other two interventions are Intensified Case Finding for TB which focuses on screening, and diagnosis of TB and Infection Control (IC) measures. Malawi is implementing this combined intervention of ART and IPT in five high-TB-burden districts of Lilongwe, Blantyre, Zomba, Thyolo and Chiradzulu.”

The districts were selected apparently due to high numbers of reported TB cases.

“The country considered these interventions because the risk of developing TB is 50 percent among people living with HIV in their lifetime. In addition, HIV increases the progression of latent TB to TB disease. However, the situation can be reversed by taking lifelong IPT alongside ART,” Malango added.

But the doctor who pleaded for anonymity told us that ART patients, “being delicate patients”, need a lot of information on what can work for them and how to avoid what is not working.

He further said in situations where the patients display drastic side effects, they must be sufficiently advised on what to do next including abandoning the TB drugs, where necessary or altering the dosages.

“These are medical issues, and we ought to be very careful with the instructions we give to patients. One simple instruction can kill if not properly relayed,” the doctor warned.

Some patients said they, in fact, do not know anything about what they should do in cases of side effects other than to continue taking both drugs for fear of “