To mark the World Tuberculosis Day (March 24), The Hindu conducted a webinar on “World TB Day: Towards Patient-Centric and Tech-Enabled TB Care” on Friday.
Ramya Ananthakrishnan, Director, REACH (Resource Group for Education and Advocacy for Community Health), gave an overview of tuberculosis (TB), symptoms and diagnostic tools, classification, treatment regimens, and role of TB champions.
She said that as of 2023-2024, India had about 25 lakh people identified with tuberculosis, and what was sad was that, even today, one person dies of TB every five minutes in India.
Every patient with TB, whether they get treated in the public sector or private sector, gets notified to a central portal “Ni-kshay”, and every patient is eligible for a direct benefit transfer, wherein they get ₹1,000 per month, she said. She highlighted another recent aspect of TB Preventive Therapy for all eligible house contacts.
She listed the various challenges, including the delay in care seeking, stigma, access to diagnosis and treatment, adherence to treatment period, and limited effectiveness of existing vaccines.
