Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, April 10: In a move to ensure effective tuberculosis treatment, the Government of India in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) has formed a joint monitoring mission to track and suggest steps to control TB menace in the country.
The mission will review the activities of the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) from April 10 to 23. There were five such missions undertaken since the inception of RNTCP in 1992. The last one was in August 2012.
Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) director Shantanu Kar will be a member of the mission this time, which will convene in Shimla this Saturday. Kar said the objective of the mission would be to review the country’s progress towards universal access to TB care, challenges and plans for TB control and to prepare an effective roadmap to eradicate the deadly disease from the country.
The mission has 100 national and 50 international experts and specialists from international agencies partnering with RNTCP.
“The deadline for millennium development goal is drawing closer, but the performance of the country at large is far from satisfactory. There have to be strong plans for the eradication of the disease which will remain our primary focus this time in the mission,” said Kar.
The mission that assembled last time in 2012 has found that one in every four TB patients in the world lives in India. Also, India has the highest TB burden in the world. The disease kills one person every two minutes in the country.
Since the inception of RNTCP in Orissa, health officials have detected 4,81,058 TB patients and have treated 36,421. About 45,777 new cases have been detected in 2014 and have been put on treatment. However, about 2,378 people died of TB without treatment in 2012 and 1,222 in 2013. The health officials have treated and saved 41,649 people in 2012 and 20,390 in 2013.
