In just a fortnight this July, an active search helped detect 110 “hidden” tuberculosis (TB) cases in Kashmir’s Udhampur district, another 280 in Tamil Nadu’s Salem district, and 106 TB cases in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district. As part of the Central government’s Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme, which aims to eliminate tuberculosis by 2025, health authorities in different states had scanned 2 lakh people across 120 districts in the country and found as many as 9,203 previously unknown cases of the disease.
Last month’s ‘scanning’ was the second round of a three-round exercise that will culminate in December. The first round was conducted in January, during which authorities had unveiled 2,650 “hidden” cases of TB from 55 districts across 18 states.
In the second round, states such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Bihar carried out a door-to-door search for potential patients and screened them for symptoms of TB. In Tamil Nadu alone, 2,521 people tested positive for the disease that often gets overlooked as cases of simple cough or fever. Authorities in Karnataka registered 1,632 new TB cases during the July fortnight while Bihar discovered 1,559 cases. TB, an infectious disease, mainly affects the lungs and can be fatal in the absence of treatment.
“The focus during the second round of this active search campaign was on high-risk groups – persons with HIV, labourers, migrants, slum dwellers and others,” Dr Sunil Khaparde, Deputy Director General and Head of Central TB division, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, told The Indian Express.
“We had screened 46 lakh people in January and examined sputum samples of 69,638. During the second round, our teams of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) and multi-purpose health workers were able to reach out to more than 2 crore people across 20 states. High-risk groups were mapped out by each state. They were screened for TB-related symptoms like cough for more than two weeks, fever, pain in the back and weight loss. Sputum samples of 2 lakh people were examined and 9,203 new cases of TB were detected,” he said.
The newly discovered TB patients will now be put under treatment on government expenditure. Those detected in the first round are undergoing treatment, officials said. According to government figures, there are 17 lakh TB cases in India, but the numbers are widely believed to be an underestimate. The Global TB report by the World Health Organisation last year put the estimated number of TB patients in India at 28 lakh.
While the Centre hopes to notch up the numbers with this active case-finding exercise, activists are cautious. “It is a welcome move, but we need a more aggressive campaign to create awareness about TB and ensure that persons who are newly detected with TB are not stigmatised,” said Blessina Kumar, coordinator of ‘Touched By TB’, a national coalition of people affected by TB.
Source: The Indian Express