Nadda said that the government has called for a meeting to end TB by 2025 and has accelerated action in this regard.
Union Health Minister JP Nadda on Tuesday pointed out at the World Health Organisation’s Regional Health Ministers’ meeting on Tuberculosis, that the WHO South-East Asia region is disproportionately affected by the problem of Tuberculosis (TB). The drug resistant TB is a larger problem affecting our population and significantly contributing to the morbidity and mortality, he said.
Also present were Health Ministers from WHO South East Asia region and Western Pacific region countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, South Korea, Indonesia, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste.
India has set an ambitious target of eliminating TB by 2025, which experts have deemed to be impossible. Nadda said that the government has called for a meeting to end TB by 2025 and has accelerated action in this regard.
He informed that India has made case notification mandatory, which means that every case of TB reported in private sector has to be notified to the government.
A high proportion, almost 92 per cent of TB patients with HIV have been put on antiretroviral therapy. He also added that more than 500 CBNAAT machines have been rolled out in one year, offering rapid quality diagnostics, linking at least one such machine for each district.
“These steps have led to 35 per cent rise in the Drug Resistant TB case notification in 2016. New anti-TB drug Bedaquiline has been introduced under Conditional Access Programme (CAP) to improve outcomes of drug resistant TB treatment,” said Nadda.
Also Nadda urged WHO to include TB in its global priority list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to guide research, discovery, and development of new antibiotics.
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