The National TB Elimination Programme is doing well and is a success story. When a patient comes to us for treatment, either from the public sector or from the private sector, our success rates are above 80%, and we are doing remarkably and consistently well.

Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld, spoke to Dr R P Joshi , Deputy Director General, to find out about the achievements in the elimination of tuberculosis program by 2025.

NATIONAL TB ELIMINATION PROGRAM

India has set an ambitious target of achieving the elimination of tuberculosis by 2025, five years ahead of the SDG goal. That means we want to reduce the incidence to 80% of the burden so that tuberculosis does not remain a public health problem. And I’m happy to share that it has achieved remarkable success in the last few years, and we are going into mission mode to achieve this goal.

National TB Elimination Programme

is doing well and is a success story. When a patient comes to us for treatment, either from the public sector or from the private sector, our success rates are above 80%, and we are doing remarkably and consistently well.

For MTR TB, which is Multi-Drug Resistant TB, we have already moved from injectables and older regimens to newer regimens and oral medicines with a better success rate than earlier.

LATENT TB

Latent TB is when a person exposed to tuberculosis bacilli has the bacteria inside him but because the body’s resistance is good, he has not developed the disease. This is one of the most important aspects because such people act as a reservoir of infection in the community.