04/01/2020 - Health

KEY POINTS

·        India still has the highest TB burden in the world and despite the disease being fully curable, people still die from it.

·        The first step is the creation of awareness and empowering of communities. TB affects millions, yet very few know enough about it. We need a multilingual, multi-stakeholder awareness effort to ensure that every single Indian knows about the challenges of TB and where to seek treatment.

·        This is the first step towards ensuring that people are empowered with the necessary information to identify and recognise TB symptoms, and seek diagnosis and treatment.

·        The second step is ensuring that we provide every Indian with access to correct diagnosis and treatment for TB, regardless of their ability to pay for it.

·        This can only happen if we work with the private sector as we did in the case of polio. We need to go door to door, identify TB patients, and provide each of them care with compassion.

·        We must track these missing cases and ensure that those in need of care and treatment are able to access it, also working with the private sector through organisations like the Indian Medical Association and Indian Academy of Paediatrics, to ensure patient-centric care as per “Standards of TB Care in India” (STCI) help eradicate TB.

·        A key challenge is building a forward-looking plan to address and control drug resistance, a man-made menace that is a major roadblock in our fight against TB. Every TB patient must be tested for drug resistance at the first point of care, whether in the public or private sector, to rule out any drug resistance.

·        The Nikshay Poshan Yojana — besides numerous other schemes — under which TB patients receive Rs 500 every month while on treatment to ensure that the patients have economic support and nutrition during the required period.

·        We need to come together as a country to fight the disease and end the stigma surrounding it, so that every patient can seek care that is free from discrimination and with dignity.

·        The community must act as a source of support for the patient. This will only happen as we educate more and more people about the nature of the disease.

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