National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP)
- India has set a target of 2025 for eliminating TB.
- The national strategic plan (2017-2025)- target of no more than 44 new TB cases per lakh population by 2025.
- The 2023 report pegs this number at 199 cases per lakh.
- It aims to reduce mortality to 3 deaths per lakh population by 2025.
- India’s goal to achieve a rapid decline in the burden of tuberculosis (TB) morbidity and mortality, while working towards the elimination of TB in the country by 2025, has plateaued.
- The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is looking at reworking the protocol, TB medication and its duration, to reboot the TB-free initiative for eliminating deaths, disease, and poverty resulting from the infection.
- According to the Health Ministry, India has been engaged in TB control activities for more than 50 years, yet the disease continues to be the country’s most severe health crisis.
- Challenges in TB elimination:
- Additionally, the country also has more than a million ‘missing’ TB cases annually, which are not notified.
- Most remain either undiagnosed or inadequately diagnosed and treated in the private sector.
- New technologies help in early detection, advanced and effective interventions, treatment and care of TB.
Global TB Report 2023 by World Health Organisation
- India continues to have the highest incidence of bacterial infection of TB.
- India accounts for 27 per cent of the total TB cases in the world, according to the Global TB Report 2023 by the World Health Organisation.
- Two positive trends for India.
- There was an increase in reporting of TB cases, crossing even the pre-pandemic high with 24.2 lakh cases in 2022.
- The coverage of treatment for the infection increased to 80%.
- A sudden drop in mortality due to TB was noted in the 2023 report. This was owing to the WHO report accepting India’s Sample Registration System dataset as the basis for the calculations instead of the Global Burden of Disease report.
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