Centre To Start A 3 Months Treatment Program For TB Prevention: PM

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on Friday addressed the One World TB Summit at Rudrakash Convention Centre in Varanasi. He also launched various initiatives including the TB-Mukt Panchayat, the official pan-India rollout of a shorter TB Preventive Treatment (TPT), the Family-centric care model for TB.

Along similar lines, the Prime Minister highlighted that the government is starting a 3 months treatment programme for the prevention of  TB instead of a 6-month course. He also informed that earlier, the patients had to take medicines for 6 months every day but now, in the new system, the patient will have to take medicine only once a week.

The Prime Minister also laid the foundation stone of the National Centre for Disease Control and High Containment Laboratory and inaugurated the site for the Metropolitan Public Health Surveillance Unit in Varanasi.  

Noting the major challenge of nutrition for TB patients, the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, highlighted the contributions of Ni-kshay Mitra Campaign in helping TB patients. He underlined that the government had announced a Direct Benefit Transfer scheme for TB patients in 2018 and as a result, approximately Rs 2000 crores have been directly transferred into their bank accounts for their treatment, where more roughly 75 lakh TB patients have benefitted from this.

“Ni-kshay Mitras have now become a new source of energy for all TB patients”, the Prime Minister said. Noting that it is extremely difficult to arrive at new solutions by practicing outdated ways, the Prime Minister said that the government has worked with new strategies so that TB patients do not fall out of their treatment. 

He gave examples of initiating the Ayushman Bharat Scheme for the screening and treatment of TB, increasing the number of testing labs in the country and formulating region-specific work policies by targeting cities where the number of TB patients is high. 

The Prime Minister also informed about the tech integration in the TB Free India campaign. He said that Ni-kshay Portal and the use of data science are going a long way in this regard. He said that the Health Ministry-ICMR developed a new method for sub-national disease surveillance that has made India, apart from WHO, the only country to have this kind of model. 

Referring to the capacity and health infrastructure enhancement during the pandemic, the Prime Minister underlined the high use of Trace, Test, Track, Treat and Technology, in the fight against the disease. 

“There is a massive global potential in this local approach of India”, he said emphasizing the need to collectively use that potential. He informed that 80 percent of TB medicines are made in India. “I would like that more and more countries get the benefit of all such campaigns, innovations and modern technology of India. All of the countries involved in this summit can develop a mechanism for this. I am sure, this resolution of ours will definitely be fulfilled - Yes, We can End TB”, the Prime Minister added.