India has ended polio and will use a similar intensified effort to end TB: JP Nadda

NewsBharati    17-Nov-2017
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Moscow, November 17: On Ending TB in Sustainable Development Era, Health Minister JP Nadda reaffirmed India’s commitment to eliminating TB by 2025 at 1st WHO Global Ministerial Conference at Moscow, Russia. To strengthen and energize the discourse on TB and are perhaps the biggest window for global action on TB in the foreseeable future the Ministerial and High-Level meetings offer participating nations the potential.

 

Speaking at the event Nadda said that India has ended polio and will use a similar intensified effort to end TB also. The National Strategic Plan has four pillars to address the major challenges for TB control, namely Detect, Treat, Build and Prevent to eliminate TB.


The Minister said that the major challenges for TB control in India the government’s first priority is reaching the unreached by ensuring the access to care for some vulnerable populations such as tribals, people in urban slums etc. Early diagnosis of all patients and putting them on the right treatment and ensuring their complete treatment is crucial.

 
He further added that the Indian government has given top priority to addressing the quality of care for patients. 25% of the budget is earmarked for direct interventions in this area which includes free diagnosis with rapid molecular tests, free treatment with best quality drugs and regimens, financial and nutritional support to patients, online TB notification systems, mobile technology-based adherence monitoring system, interphase agencies for better private sector engagements, policy for transparent service purchase schemes, stronger community engagements, communication campaigns, regulatory systems to capture information on all those consuming anti-TB drugs etc.
 
 

Stressing on India’s commitment further, Nadda stated that to provide access to patients in difficult to reach areas, both socially and geographically, the government has started active TB case finding campaigns in selected areas. We have already completed two such campaigns covering 257 districts and screened over 30 million vulnerable persons and detected over 15,000 additional TB cases. He further added that we are planning the next campaign in December this year. We will now be mounting interventions for TB in urban slum areas through the urban health mission.


JP Nadda TB Moscow urban health mission