A house to house active case finding for tuberculosis patients is in full swing in Palamu.
District TB officer Dr Anil Kumar Sriwastaw said "Our sahiyas are out on the job. They are visiting each and every house and finding people having symptoms of fever persisting for two weeks, cough of similar duration, sweating at night, weight loss etc."
On finding such a person sputum is taken in a container for microscopic examination at the dedicated microscopy centre, added Dr Anil popular by his first name.
The house to house active case finding will go upto March 17.
A sahiya has to visit 30 houses a day for which she gets 7 rupees per house and her companion who may be anyone of her family like an adult son or daughter or sister or brother or husband etc will also get 7 rupees per house.
Thus a team of two of active case finding for TB gets 14 rupees per house which comes to 420 rupees for the team of two for 30 houses a day.
Dr Anil said this is a massive public health exercise and every inmate of the house should cooperate with the active case finding team for the TB.
Asked if there is any scope of bypassing houses without visiting them or fudging the figures, Dr Anil said "Sahiyas do their job sincerely. They have a well defined format. Besides, nothing of each such team is done on the surface of the wall or door of the house so visited by the active case finding team."
Data of every day active case finding for TB is digitally sent to state TB monitoring set up.
Sources said there are 84 community health officers in Palamu who keep a watch on it.