‘Community engagement is key to achieving the target’

The Vice President, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu, today called for making people ‘key partners’ in the campaign for ‘TB Mukt Bharat’ by 2025. “More than any other disease, community engagement is vital to completely eliminate TB”, he stressed. Observing that the impact of tuberculosis is disproportionately felt on the vulnerable sections of society, he called for a massive mobilization of resources and multi-sectoral interventions to eradicate TB.

The Vice President said the goal of eliminating TB totally can be achieved only if it was given the shape of a people’s movement and called upon public representatives at all levels to involve people in the ‘Jan Andolan’. He said a multi-pronged effort is needed by adopting a ‘Team India’ spirit to make India TB free by 2025.

Addressing the National Conference on Women Winning against TB, the Vice President said the government’s seriousness on TB elimination is clear given that it was the second TB-related conference this year. He expressed happiness that the conference not only involves parliamentarians, but other public representatives, organisations working for TB elimination, women TB survivors, anganwadi workers, among others.

On this occasion, the Vice President praised the courage of women TB survivors, some of whom narrated their experiences. Shri Naidu stressed that there is a need to adopt a gender sensitive approach to TB, given that the disease can have a disproportionately high impact on women. He observed that their high susceptibility is due to inadequate priority given to their health, wellness and nutrition. “Facing the misery of abandonment and violence if found to have TB, it is not surprising that there are a large number of unreported and therefore untreated cases of TB amongst women”, he noted.

The Vice President called for countering this through measures such as better and structured counselling about the disease through health workers, better nutritional support through schemes like Nikshay Poshan Yojana, and paying particular attention to children, pregnant and postpartum women with TB. He urged states to take proactive steps to take up door-to-door screening, especially for women who may not be willing to approach healthcare systems on their own.

Stressing the need for concerted action from all levels of the government to achieve the target of complete eradication by 2025, Shri Naidu called for improving the nutritional status of people, better contact screening, reducing out-of-pocket expenditure, having safety nets for the most vulnerable sections and early detection of TB in hilly and remote areas.

Highlighting the need to change the social perception about TB, Shri Naidu noted that apart from the physical impact of the disease, there is a lot of economic and social cost on the lives of the people. “TB patients face unnecessary stigma from families, employers and society at large. This is totally unacceptable and must be stopped”, he emphasised.

Shri Naidu noted that stigma attached to the disease makes it even more difficult to screen the disease at an early stage, pointing to how only 18 lakh new TB cases were reported in 2020, against the estimated 26 lakh. Calling for better awareness and advocacy programmes to change the social perception about tuberculosis, he stressed that “the message should reach the people that TB is definitely preventable and curable.”

He suggested that TB advocacy programmes should leverage the heightened awareness about lung health in people because of the pandemic to spread the message about the disease.

In this regard, the Vice President also urged elected representatives – MPs, MLAs and Gram Pradhans – to take regular reviews at the district- and sub-district level. He also called upon public representatives to be catalysts in the mass awareness campaign in the fight against TB by playing a proactive role in the public conversations.

The Vice President appreciated the efforts of the Ministries of Women and Child Development, and Health and Family Welfare for coming together and starting a “serious discussion on how to develop new strategies to alleviate the impact of TB on women”.

Minister of Health & Family Welfare, and Chemicals and Fertilisers, Dr. Mansukh L. Mandaviya, Minister of Women and Child Development, Smt. Smriti Irani, Ministers of State, Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar and Dr. Munjpara Mahendrabhai, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Shri Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Department, Shri Indevar Pandey, and others were present during the event.

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