Civic body denied senior medic with drug resistant TB strain leave for treatment; doctor dies a lonely death in Sewri Hospital.A 49-year-old doctor from Sewri Tuberculosis Hospital who contracted the disease from a patient and was denied leave for treatment by the BMC, prompting this paper to run a sustained campaign to reinstate his rights, died on Monday. Dr Suresh Vaze was diagnosed with extremely drug resistant TB last year, a strain that is staves off all but two courses of treatment, and was admitted to the same hospital where he cared for patients diagnosed with the disease.He was unaccompanied at the time of death – his wife and one of his two daughters, who contracted XDR TB from Dr Vaze, left him in May. A physician who attended to the senior doctor said Dr Vaze lost motor function a fortnight ago. He suffered organ failure and both his lungs had collapsed. “He was like a dead body. He’d stopped eating and stopped reacting to people,” said a doctor, requesting that his name be withheld. “It was painful to see a colleague with whom I worked for 15 years waste away. And what made it worse was that he died a lonely death.”Dr Vaze was infected in 2011. He continued to work at the hospital while he received the stipulated sixmonth course of treatment. As per BMC policy an employee who is undergoing treatment for TB must return to work if his or her sputum tests negative for the disease – which is a self-de-feating proposition, considering the subject’s test returns negative when he or she is in the midst of treatment.Dr Vaze continued to treat over 30 multi drug resistant TB cases a day and in 2012 was diagnosed as infected by that strain – rendering him immune to second line drugs. He began treatment for MDR-TB and, in keeping with BMC’s policy, was told to return to work when his sputum tested negative. He was infected with XDR-TB in April last year, a mycobacterial infection that requires at least two years of sustained treatment. The BMC would only grant him six months-worth of leave, of which he had used up half. In October, Mumbai Mirror ran the third of a series of articles on Dr Vaze – we withheld his name in all three – inducing the BMC to amend its leave policy for doctors infected with TB. The city corporation now grants such medical staff full paid leave for their treatment, irrespective of the duration.Since then, Dr Vaze continued to be treated at Sewri TB Hospital – he lived in the staff quarters within the precincts of the facility. His wife and 18-year-old daughter left home after they contracted the disease from him. “He locked himself up after they went away. He was depressed. He lost over 20 kilos in the last two months,” a doctor said.“When he stopped coming to the hospital for treatment, I sent over a DOT [Directly Observed Treatment] provider to visit his home but he refused to take his medication,” said Dr Rajendra Nanaware, medical superintendent at the hospital. “We informed his wife and she visited him but couldn’t stay because she too is battling the disease.”Dr Vaze was declared dead at 6.20 pm on Monday. His wife and daughters were present at the funeral. “The wife and daughter are responding well to treatment,” Dr Nanaware said.