Unable to meet the increasing cost of its efforts to curb Tuberculosis (TB), the Union Health Ministry is mulling to set up a TB Corpus Fund by roping in PSUs and corporate sector. The fund will be for financing activities like nutrition support for TB patients, active case finding in prisons, slums, tribal areas, sputum collection and transport in difficult areas.
The fund under Bharat Kshay Niyantran Pratishtan (India TB Control Foundation) is part of the several measures that the Ministry is planning to achieve under the National Strategic Plans NSP 2017-2025, framed recently after several discussions with all the stakeholders in the sector.
It is built on the success and learnings of the last NSP implemented thorough the Health Ministry’s Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP). The NSP 2017-2025 aims to achieve a rapid decline in cases of TB morbidity and mortality while working towards elimination of the disease in India by 2025, said a senior official from the Ministry.
Despite several measures, India continues to carry one-fourth of the global burden of TB with 40 per cent of its population infected with the bacteria. The deadly disease claims an estimated 4,80,000 Indians every year and more than 1,400 every day.
However, what is worrying the Government is that there are more than 10 lakh ‘missing’ cases every year that are not notified and most remain either undiagnosed or unaccountably and inadequately diagnosed and treated in the private sector.
For achieving the goals, the Ministry is in the midst of preparing a plan to address the patients seeking care in private sector.
“The scheme will have suitable incentives for the private doctors and patients for reporting TB cases coupled with another scheme to provide free of cost medicines to TB patients going to a private doctor/institute,” the official added.
He said a robust, modern informative system will be developed to monitor the newly diagnosed as well as existing cases of TB on delivery of the drug kit to the patient, compliance to treatment regimen etc.
The availability of rapid molecular tests will be suitably augmented so that these diagnostic facilities are also made available for patients referred by any private doctor or institute. To improve the compliance of the TB patients to the treatment regimen, a customised SMS services will be started to remind each patient on regular basis about the time to consume the drugs.
A mechanism will also be started for facilitating nutritional support to the TB patients, including financial support through DBT mode, the official said.
