Community should play proactive role in fight against tuberculosis: Senior official
Sep 10, 2022
New Delhi [India], September 10 : Community should participate and play a proactive role in the fight against tuberculosis, said Dr Raghuram S Rao, additional DDG, TB division, Directorate General of Health Services.
In an exclusive interview with ANI, Rao said, "It is about getting the community to participate and play a proactive role in the fight against tuberculosis. So, what we are asking from the community is to come forward and adopt a TB patient for a facility and all TB patients within that geography."
"So, that they are able to provide them with additional nutritional support or social support or any other, additional support that the patient or the family may need," he said further.
He added, "Whatever the government is doing, those efforts are being done in terms of making sure that the disease is handled but as an issue to the TB to be addressed and it requires the society and the social determinants have to be addressed. For all these things. If the community comes together, it helps and amplifies the effect of the work that the government has been doing."
On a number of adoptions, he said, "this was first started off in Uttar Pradesh, as honourable Governor Anandiben Patel, first started adopting children with both the staff of the Raj Bhavan itself, motivating them to do that. So we have some 1000 or reported once from the management. There's a lot of data entry that is still ongoing in the field. So we'll have better figures maybe by the end of next week."
"The adopter, with help of the District TB Officer, should design & give a nutritional basket containing cereals, millets, milk powder, oil, protein, and groundnut to the TB patients. The cost of it is around Rs 1000 for 1 patient for 1 month." Dr Rao explained the nutrition basket that will be given by the adopter under Ni-kshay scheme
The govt is targeting approx nine lakh TB patients for adoption.
In a few years antimicrobial resistance has been increased in TB patients as well which also one of the biggest challenges, according to Dr Rao, "antimicrobial resistance is when a particular bacteria is getting resistant to a particular drug, that's quite rampant, because of the rampant use of antibiotics in the first line of treatment. So tuberculosis also we find resistance, what we call as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, and overall it's around 6- 7 per cent of the tuberculosis patients that are found the drug-resistant, and what it makes is treatment more challenging."
"The drugs are second-line drugs and a little more toxic drug. So it requires also a longer treatment regimen, almost nine to 12 months now with newer drugs coming in, so it's costly, but also the government is making sure that these drugs even if it is drug resistant, TB is provided free, of course, to all patients," He said
On a number of the highest TB cases, Dr Rao said, "UP has most numbers of TB cases because of its sheer size & population density, followed by Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Bihar, Gujarat, MP. From 2018 to now national strategic plan made & micro plan available at state & district levels."
