In a major achievement, Uttar Pradesh has, for the first time, set a record of all its districts scoring over 80 out of the designated 100 points in the key indicators of the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme in 2023. The milestone demonstrates the government’s commitment to fulfilling the PM’s resolution of making the country TB-free by 2025.
Rampur has topped with 92.8 points, followed by Pratapgarh with 91.6 and Bijnor 90.9 points. The overall score for the state is 85.3 points, which is 5.3 points higher than the set benchmark. This score is based on the annual achievements until December.
According to Director General of Health Dr Brijesh Rathore, the monitoring and periodic reviews by the Yogi Adityanath government have resulted in the state achieving a milestone under the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme.
According to the programme, if a district scores more than 80 out of the designated 100 points, its performance will be considered excellent. In accordance with this, the performance of all districts of UP was better in the year 2023 as compared to the previous years.
He mentioned that the programme assigns 20 points for the key indicators of TB patient notifications, wherein the state has received the full score. This indicates that throughout the year, special focus was laid on identification of TB patients in every district, because the sooner the patients are identified, the sooner treatment can be started and they can be cured.
He further said that the Central TB Division set a target of 5.50 lakh patient notifications for Uttar Pradesh in 2023, against which the state notified over 6.27 lakh (114%) patients, far exceeding the target. The second key indicator was the success rate of treatment of drug-sensitive TB patients at 89 per cent. The rate of quality treatment of drug resistant TB (DRTB) patients was 88 per cent.
National programme director Dr Seema Srivastava said that the HIV testing rate, along with TB, was 96 per cent in 2023. The Health department aims to ensure HIV testing for every TB patient. The state has shown better performance in TB testing cases through Universal Drug Susceptibility Testing (UDST), also known as CBNAAT or TrueNAT machines, achieving an 86 per cent success rate. Efforts are being made to further improve this performance with the assured availability of machines at the block level.
Under the Nikshay Poshan Yojana, the state received 7.1 out of the allocated 10 points to ensure a monthly payment of Rs 500 during the course of treatment, because some patients do not want to come under this scheme.
In the case of Tuberculosis Preventive Treatment (TPT), most districts made commendable efforts. In this regard, the state scored 4.5 out of the specified five points for bringing children under the age of five into the TPT ambit. For PLHIV’s TPT, the state received 4.4 out of the allocated five points.
Joint director (Terosis)/State Tuberculosis Control Programme officer Dr Shailendra Bhatnagar said that the Moradabad division stood first in the state by scoring 89.5 out of 100 points in the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme indicators.
The score of Prayagraj division was 89.1, Aligarh 88.6, Bareilly 87, Chitrakoot 87.5, Saharanpur 87.5, Varanasi 87.7, Gorakhpur - 87.9, Azamgarh 87, Meerut 86.7, Ayodhya 86.8, Jhansi 86.8, Deoria 85.4, Mirzapur 85.4, Lucknow 84.7, Agra 85.5, Basti 84.2, and Kanpur 84.2 points.
