Financial Express: Eliminating Tuberculosis by 2025
World TB Day: Eliminating Tuberculosis by 2025 – Is it a possible mission?
Financial Express, Dr K Madan Gopal and Suryaprabha Sadasivan, 24 March 2021
(Image courtesy of Financial Express)
In the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken the centre stage of all public health discussions, decisions, and interventions, and rightly so! With the roll-out of vaccination, increased thrust on COVID-19 testing coupled with mask and hand hygiene-related behavioural shift, the situation seems more manageable today. And this allows us to reshift our focus on critical public health priorities such as tuberculosis (TB).
As per 2019 data from the World Health Organisation (WHO), India is estimated to have close to 2.64 million TB cases. Recently, Prime Minister Modi outlined his aim to eliminate TB from the country by 2025. In line with this vision, the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP) was launched in 2017 with a funding of over Rs. 12,000 crores to ensure access to quality diagnosis, treatment, and support. Eradication of TB will not only mean a decline in cases and deaths but also the elimination of the socio-economic burden of this disease. The rate of decline has been around 1.5-1.8 percent since 2017, which is not enough to realise India’s aspirations of eliminating TB by 2025.
