Health ministry to rank districts on TB prevalence

Stepping up efforts to meet its target of tuberculosis (TB) eradication by 2025, the health ministry will soon start ranking districts across India on disease prevalence, officials familiar with the matter said.

“We are trying to rank the districts on the basis of number of people living with TB (prevalence) and new infections being detected (incidence) to have a precise idea about the disease distribution pattern in the country,” said Sanjeeva Kumar, additional secretary (health).

Last month, the ministry had asked states to identify at least two blocks that would be made TB-free in the first phase of the disease elimination programme.

“Project implementation plan is being prepared at the moment and we should come out with it soon,” Kumar said.

India has set an ambitious target of eradicating TB by 2025, five years ahead of the global target of 2030, which many feel is an unrealistic goal given the country’s population and estimated diseases burden.

India – with 27.9 lakh TB cases, 4.23 lakh disease-related deaths, and an average of 211 new infections diagnosed per 100,000 people – has the highest number of Tuberculosis patients across the globe.

Elimination, defined as restricting new infections to less than one case per 100,000 people, is possible only if patients get diagnosed and cured without any break in treatment. Interruptions can exponentially raise the patient’s risk of developing multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is harder to treat, experts said.

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