Around 6 Lakh Indians With TB Yet To Be Notified To National TB Programme: NGO

Benglauru, 9 Nov 2019:

Swasti Health Catalyst has noted that around 600,000 Indians with TB are yet to be notified to the national TB programme, which means that they are most likely not even accessing the care they needed. The NGO sees that it will have serious implications on the Indian government’s End TB programme.

TB can even cause patients over 50 per cent of their annual income loss, which can be catastrophic, potentially pushing these patients and their families into financial misery.

A unified and inclusive effort is the need of the hour. We evidently need to accelerate efforts if we are to end TB in 6 years. There is growing consensus that our proverbial silver bullet against TB is a multi-sectoral approach, Krithika Raghavan, technical specialist-policy for advocacy, Learning4impact, Swasti Health Catalyst, told Pharmabiz.

Our country accounts for 27 per cent of the world’s TB burden and have pledged to eliminate the disease by 2025. But how do we get to the finish line, she queried.

In 2018 alone, over 400,00 Indians succumbed to this preventable disease. Despite TB being curable, the challenges of a largely unregulated private sector, poverty, under-nutrition, poor living conditions and risk factors such as tobacco use drive the TB epidemic in India.

Over the last few years, we have gained some ground against TB. Notification of TB cases by the private sector has risen by over 60 per cent since 2013, giving us a better idea of our TB burden. The patients are being given cash incentives for their nutritional needs and the national TB budget has almost doubled.

India has initiated certain measures for multi-sectoral action by engaging with the private sector through the Joint Effort for Elimination of Tuberculosis (JEET) programme and collaborating with the Ministries of AYUSH, Defence and Railways to improve awareness of TB. However, as the protests by TB activists at the 50th Union Conference on Lung Health in Hyderabad over prevailing drug prices indicate, there is a definitive need to create common and inclusive platforms to give unheard voices the opportunity to participate in and shape the progress against TB.

India’s success against polio may well be attributed to concerted action that united the government, private sector, civil society, patient groups, industry and the scientific community in achieving a common goal. We have every reason to assume that such measures would work in ending TB too, pointed out Raghavan. Pharmabiz