For the first time in the last six years, the TB detection rate in the country has declined by 3 per cent to 68 per cent in 2012 over the previous year, according to a latest Government report. In fact this year, the Government failed to achieve its target detection rate of 70 per cent. In 2011, the detection rate was 70 per cent.
In other words, alarmingly 32 per cent cases are out of the radar of the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) of the Union Health Ministry. As per the recently released TB India Report 2013, of those total treated, only 88 per cent were declared to be out of danger from TB.
This despite is a huge investment in the much-hyped DOTS programme launched in 2006 under the RNTCP with an aim to curb the deadly disease. Though India is the second-most populous country in the world, it has more new TB cases annually than any other country. In 2011, out of the estimated global annual incidence of 9 million TB cases, 2.3 million were estimated to have occurred in India.
For last five years, the Government had managed to keep the TB detection rate at 70 per cent and was hoping to increase it to 80 per cent through various initiatives undertaken in the past years. Moreover, with the increasing cases of drug resistant to disease, in May 2012, in a landmark decision the Government notified disease with an aim to facilitate early diagnosis and rational treatment, prevention of complications and drug resistance, and reduce deaths
due to TB.
However, undiagnosed and mistreated cases continue to drive the epidemic in India. In 2010, 3,60,000 patients died of TB, or about 1,000 deaths per day.
Nearly 1,00,000 cases of serious multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) are estimated to occur in country annually, and each MDR TB case costs more than Rs 1 lakh to diagnose and treat.
In the 12th Five year Plan (2012-17) with the theme of “Universal Access for quality diagnosis and treatment for all TB patients in the community” the Government plans to target “reaching the unreached”.
These targets will include early detection and treatment of about 87 lakh Tuberculosis patients, 2 lakh MDR-TB patients with especial focus on marginalised and hard to reach populations and high risk and vulnerable groups, says the report.