Civic body takes initiatives to spread awareness on TB

Medical camps, street plays and seminars to continue till end of this month

NAVI MUMBAI: With World Tuberculosis Day observed on Thursday, the health department of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) has organised week-long workshops and sensitisation programmes from March 22 to 31.

World TB Day is observed to build public awareness on tuberculosis.

The programmes started with series of street plays and medical camps which will continue till the end of the month. On Wednesday, a sensitisation programme was held for the faculty and staff of Modern college in Vashi followed by another sensitization seminar for around 80 private doctors at Dy Patil medical college auditorium.

“The World TB Day is an opportunity to raise awareness the disease and the status of TB prevention and control efforts required. We have involved around 10 NGOs who will be doing different activities like poster exhibition, speech competition, camps, slide presentation, audio-visual presentations throughout the week. We have also appointed a theatre group to specially perform the series of 5 street plays which will be performed in the outpatient department of the civic hospital in Vashi and several places across Navi Mumbai,” said Dr Vasant Mane, health in-charge of tuberculosis department, NMMC.

Each street play is of about 35 minutes detailing about how TB happens, why the symptoms should not be ignored and how the treatment happens. Besides this, medical staffs of all the 26 Urban Health Post ( UHP) will also be given sensitisation training to look for TB patients doorto-door. The civic body has also rolled out handbills and posters which are being distributed at all public places, housing societies, schools and colleges. Banners have also been put up across all UHPs and major junctions. “We also asked private hospitals to report every case so that we can induce them to purse the whole treatment,” added the doctor.

Officials said that although the figures of the cases are more or less constant with a slight fluctuation in the numbers, there is an increased awareness amongst people over all. In the year 2015 from January to December, a total of 2385 progressive patients were being treated for TB under NMMC which includes the newly detected cases, relapse, extra-pulmonary TB. While during the same period, 104 MDR-TB patients and 20 XDR-TB patients were taking treatment.

“We are giving treatment to every patient registered. However, many patients discontinue treatment in between which is the main may cause of the relapse cases. Alcoholics and migrators are the major dropout cases, but they might be taking treatment at other places where they move in. So it is difficult to state how much it has increased as we are unable to note the final figures on several occasions,” said the doctor.