Need to address drug-resistant TB cases in India: Health Secy

India accounts for nearly one-fourth of global incidence of tuberculosis and public health officials here are working on finding a cure for drug-resistant tuberculosis, Union Health Secretary Luv Verma today said.
"India has the highest tuberculosis burden in the world, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the global incidence. In 2012, out of the estimated global annual incidence of 8.7 million TB cases, 2 to 2.4 million were estimated to have occurred in India," he said.
Verma was addressing the ASSOCHAM Tuberculosis Awareness, Prevention and Wellness Programme here.
Under the national tuberculosis control programme (RNTCP), treatment success rates have tripled from 25 per cent in pre-RNTCP era to 88 per cent upto 2012 and TB death rate has reduced from 29 per cent to 4 per cent during the same period.

Inception of the programme has examined more than 144 million TB suspects, also diagnosed more than 18 million TB cases and saved more than 3.2 million lives.
"To improve access to tribal and other marginalized groups the programme has developed a Tribal action plan which is being implemented with the provision of additional TB units and DMCs in tribal and difficult areas along with additional staff, compensation for transportation of patient and attendant and higher rate of salary to contractual staff," the Union Health Secretary said.

Nearly 3,397 NGOs collaborations and 13,525 private practitioners are involved in the programme in different signed schemes.

Dr Nata Menabde, WHO Representative to India, stressed on urgent need to improve efforts to prevent and address the social determinants of health.
"India has 26 per cent of the incident TB cases globally. Annually, 1.3 million incident TB cases are notified to the national programme. The patients who access the public health programme get quality assured diagnosis and treatment.
"However, there are an estimated 2.2 million incident TB cases in India. Hence, there are nearly a million cases missing from notification. This missing million, are unable to avail government services as most of them are managed in the private sector," Nata said.