Setting: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, countries in the region faced a dramatic increase in tuberculosis cases and the emergence of drug resistance.
Objective: To discuss the relevance of the DOTS strategy in settings with a high prevalence of drug resistance.
Design: Retrospective analysis of one-year treatment outcomes of short-course chemotherapy (SCC) and results of drug susceptibility testing (DST) surveys of six programmes located in the former Soviet Union: Kemerovo prison, Russia; Abkhasia, Georgia; Nagorno-Karabagh, Azerbaijan; Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan; Dashoguz Velayat, Turkmenistan; and South Kazakhstan Oblast, Kazakhstan. Results are reported for new and previously treated smear-positive patients.
Results: Treatment outcomes of 3090 patients and DST results of 1383 patients were collected. Treatment success rates ranged between 87% and 61%, in Nagorno-Karabagh and Kemerovo, respectively, and failure rates between 7% and 23%. Any drug resistance ranged between 66% and 31% in the same programmes. MDR rates ranged between 28% in Karakalpakstan and Kemerovo prison and 4% in Nagorno-Karabagh.
Conclusion: These results show the limits of SCC in settings with a high prevalence of drug resistance. They demonstrate that adapting treatment according to resistance patterns, access to reliable culture, DST and good quality second-line drugs are necessary.