Diversion of health resources to contain Covid-19 pandemic and related restricted activities have severely hindered tuberculosis management plan in India with number of infections increasing by 19 per cent to 1.93 million in 2021. But the Government is hopeful that it would achieve its target of eliminating the deadly infectious disease by 2025.
On World Tuberculosis Day on Thursday, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya tweeted, "Tuberculosis is a preventable & treatable disease. On World TB Day, we reaffirm commitment to make India TB-free by 2025 by ensuring access to quality healthcare & advanced treatment. Together we can and we will eliminate TB and work towards a healthy and disease-free environment.”
"Spreading awareness on TB through sand art! On World TB Day 2022, let us all pledge to 'Step Up To End TB'," he said, adding that this will be achieved by ensuring access to quality healthcare and advanced treatment.
According to data available from the Union Health Ministry, there has been a 19 per cent increase in tuberculosis patients in 2021, up from 1.62 million cases in the year before. In 2020, TB cases had come down by nearly a third from the 2.4 million cases reported in 2019.
As per the Ministry, Covid-19 had a major impact on the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) because patients stopped visiting or couldn’t visit hospitals due to the pandemic and lockdown restrictions. These statistics were revealed in the Annual Tuberculosis Report 2022 released by Mandaviya on the occasion of the D Day.
In 2021, 34 states/union territories conducted active case finding (ACF) campaigns at the state and district level which led to the screening of 22.3 million people, out of which 1.75 million samples were tested for TB, and 73,772 additional TB patients were identified, said the report. More than 200,000 people living with HIV (PLHIV) on active care and 120,000 household contacts (HHC) of confirmed TB patients were initiated on TB Preventive Treatment (TPT). The programme has introduced TPT in contacts of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) patients in 12 States. These states are Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Delhi, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Odisha, Punjab, and Assam, as per the reports.
As per the national TB prevalence survey (2019-2021) aimed to know the actual disease burden in India at the national level, Delhi has 534 cases per lakh population followed by Rajasthan (484), Uttar Pradesh (481), Haryana (465), Chhattisgarh (454).
Among the diagnosed TB cases, 12 per cent were already on treatment and 23.3 per cent had a history of TB treatment. While the government aims to eliminate TB by 2025, the survey has recommended close follow-up of patients completing treatment for early detection of recurrent TB and planning of interventions for preventing recurrence of TB is needed.
Approximately Rs 1488 crore have been paid to 5.7 million TB patients (Rs 500 each patient) under Nikshay Poshan Yojana (NPY) from April 2018 to February 2022.
Dr Neha Rastogi Panda, consultant Infectious Diseases from the Fortis Hospital in Gurugram, Haryana emphasized on large scaling up strategy specially for diagnosis of TB, with more dependency on field based diagnostics contact tracing to avoid on-going transmission. “Considering national efforts to eliminate TB, especially in post Covid settings, there is a need to be more vigilant about on-going silent pandemic. To envisage this, private sectors / medics need to be more collaborative with government programmes. There should be a Special focus on nutritional and economic rehabilitation of the affected population, she added.