ABSTRACT
During the 6 years from 2001 to 2006, a total of 18,443 M. tuberculosis isolates were processed for drug sensitivity testing. Of those, 9614 [52.12%] were found to be multidrug resistant. A total of 86 [0.89%] cases met the criteria of XDR among the MDR-TB cases. Year-wise detection of these XDR cases is given in Table I. A consistent decline was observed in the incidence of reported cases of XDR over the years right from the year 2001. These 86 cases were reported from 7 states with the largest number from Delhi [49] followed by neighbouring Rajasthan [10], Haryana [9], Uttar Pradesh [8], Uttaranchal [5], Punjab [4] and Madhya Pradesh [1]. Of those 86 cases, only 5 patients were females and rest were males. A total of 53 out of 86 [61.6%] of the isolated resistant strains were resistant to more than 4 classes of drugs indicating severity of resistance