TB deaths in India declining: JP Nadda
DHARAMSHALA: Union health minister JP Nadda on Saturday termed the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) the most successful programme as it averted over 3.5 million deaths.
“We have been able to arrest and reverse the TB trend in the country. The number of TB incidents has dropped significantly from 289 per lakh per year in 2000 to 217 in 2015,” said Nadda while presiding over the first TB-Free India Summit held here.
“But not to be satisfied, we have to go a long way,” said the Union health minister while stressing upon the need to adopt an aggressive strategy if India has to end TB by 2025, as envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“A new National Strategic Plan (NSP) to combat TB is being prepared and emphasis is being laid on private sector engagement and digital monitoring of registration of TB patients,” said Nadda.
The focus of the new National Health Policy 2017 is on wellness and not only treatment and it commits to bring 2.5% of the gross domestic product (GDP) health.
“In the last three years, there was no slash in the health budget in fact our real expenditure has become more than the estimates,” he said.
The union health minister also stressed upon enhancing the spending capacity of the states.
“There is enough budget available, but we need to enhance spending capacity. There are medicines but disbursement is a problem,” he said.
“We are trying to help the state to enhance their spending capacity but I also need help from the state governments for this endeavour,” he added.
Earlier, a panel of experts deliberated elaborately on the problem of TB and increase in instance of Multi-Drug Resistant TB. National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases director Dr Rohit Sarin said that what actually generates the TB patients is a large pool of infected persons.
“Unless we close the tap of infected individuals, it would be very difficult to end TB,” he said, adding that the strategy should be catching the infected person early, treat him and stop the transmission.
He also stressed upon improvement in health facilities like separate OPDs for TB patients. Terming the MDR TB as human made phenomenon, Dr GR Khatri, World Lung FoundationSouth Asia said India has 2-3% MDR prevalence in new cases and around 16% in re-infections. “This is horrible number,” said Dr Khatri, stressing upon effective implementation of DOTS strategy. Experts also revealed that above 60% of the TB affected people go to private sector establishments for treatment which remains unregulated.
They said that if the treatment is not proper or the patients do not take medicine properly it develops into MDR.
According to World Health Organisation (WHO) report of the total 104 lakh global incidence of TB cases taking place per year, 28 lakh occur in India, which is 1/4th of the TB burden while 4.8 lakh die of the disease. The number of cases of MDR TB reported in India is 1.3 lakh per year.