At a TB review meeting on Tuesday, health minister J P Nadda stressed on mobilising recovered TB patients as ‘TB Champions’
India is looking at building an army to fight TB to fulfill prime minister Narendra Modi’s commitment that India will eliminate the infectious bacterial disease by 2025, five years ahead of the global schedule. That army will comprise recovered TB patients.
TB champions who made sporadic appearances in the past in big ticket public functions will soon be the face of the National TB Control Programme. In a review meeting at Nirman Bhawan on Tuesday chaired by health minister J P Nadda, the recruitment of TB Champions and use of mobile TB detection vans with home grown technology were discussed. Sources said that the ministry in a bid to step up case detection and patient compliance, plans to make use of TB champions for awareness and counselling.
“For us case detection is the biggest challenge. So we are looking at 1-2 million TB champions – these are people who have themselves suffered from the disease, been through the long and difficult treatment and won a battle. They can ease people into going for the diagnostic test, keep their morale up through the treatment – TB medication is not easy to take at all – and motivate people through the process. Their very presence would be proof that TB can be beaten, a more powerful statement than any of our IEC campaigns,” said a source.
Nadda said that there is an urgent need for creating awareness. ‘TB Champions’ who survived Tuberculosis, may be identified to raise awareness about TB in various states
TB kills an estimated 480,000 Indians every year and more than 1,400 every day. India also has more than a million ‘missing’ cases every year that are not notified and most remain either undiagnosed or unaccountably and inadequately diagnosed and
treated in the private sector.
Taking stock of the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) Nadda urged all stakeholders to come together for an aggressive strategy for TB free India by 2025. He said that there is an urgent need for creating awareness in the community and was of the view that ‘TB Champions’ who survived Tuberculosis, may be identified to raise awareness about TB in various states. He further suggested that innovative approaches should be adopted to address TB. He directed that TB awareness and case detection should be addressed through campaign mode and should be made into a mass movement.
