Harsh Vardhan addresses 75th national conference of tuberculosis and chest diseases
Dec 19, 2020
New Delhi [India], December 19 : Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Harsh Vardhan on Friday digitally addressed the Platinum Jubilee of the National Conference of Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases (NATCON).
He underlined the importance of multi-stakeholder coordination, prevention and patient-centric quality care in making giant strides towards a "TB Free India", an official release said.
He congratulated all members of the Tuberculosis Association of India for eight decades of selfless work since the organization was established in 1939.
The minister said determination of India's "TB Warriors" to fight tuberculosis during the COVID pandemic was an inspiration to public health workers across the country.
"Our government has launched programmes that are unprecedented in terms of their scale and reach," he said.
"Declaration of TB as a notifiable disease in the country has improved the identification of TB cases and helped reduce the gap in identifying the missing cases in the country. One million missing cases were reported in 2017, it has been reduced to 2.4 lakh in 2019. With nearly 7 lakh TB patients being notified by the private sector in 2019, they too have been making huge contributions towards our efforts to end TB," he added.
