Health Minister J P Nadda today directed officials to create a comprehensive strategy for addressing incidence and prevalence of leprosy to eliminate the disease at district level.
He also directed them to take up new interventions in areas where the prevalence rate is high and to mount aggressive campaigns to enhance awareness on prevention and control of the disease along with de-stigmatising it.
Nadda gave these instructions at a high-level meeting here to review the status of the National Leprosy Eradication Programme (NLEP) and the progress made under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP).
Taking stock of the Tuberculosis Control Program, the minister urged all stakeholders to come together for an aggressive strategy for tuberculosis-free India by 2025.
"There is an urgent need for creating awareness in the community," he said, adding that he was of the view that 'TB champions', who had survived the disease, be identified to raise awareness about it.
He said TB awareness and case detection should be addressed through campaign mode and be made into a mass movement.
The Union minister also directed the officers to conduct regular supervisory visits to various states for assessing the situation, preparedness and to provide on- the-spot technical guidance to state health authorities.
The government recently rolled out the daily drug regimen for the treatment of TB under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) across all states under which patients are being given fixed drug combinations (FDCs), three or four drugs in a single pill, on a daily basis instead of thrice a week.
According to the Health Ministry data, incidence of tuberculosis was estimated to be 217 per lakh population in 2015 which reduced to 211 per lakh population in 2016.
Despite the reduction, India topped the list of seven countries, accounting for 64 per cent of the 10.4 million new tuberculosis cases worldwide in 2016, according to a global report which was released by the WHO in October last year.
Also, India along with China and Russia accounted for almost of half of the 490,000, multi drug-resistant TB (MDR- TB) cases registered in 2016.
India also accounts for 60 per cent of the world's new leprosy cases and according to WHO's Global Health Observatory data repository, India registered 1,35,485 confirmed cases of leprosy in 2016.
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