Under Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi, India has accorded high priority for ending tuberculosis by 2025, five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), said Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare while addressing ministers of member nations of WHO, heads, and representatives of UN Agencies.
“Tuberculosis has been in existence since time immemorial and continues to remain a major global public health problem. Despite the progress made over the last decade, TB remains the leading infectious killer disease worldwide,” he said.
He said, “With bold and innovative policies, India has taken several critical steps towards ending TB. We have significantly reduced the number of missing TB patients from one million in 2016 to less than 0.5 million in 2019, with 2.4 million cases notified during the year. Most importantly, a third of these notifications were contributed by the private sector.”
He pointed out that poverty is a powerful determinant of tuberculosis and under-nutrition is an important risk factor of developing active TB disease. “To address this, we are providing cash incentives through Direct Benefit Transfers for nutritional support and since April 2018,” he stated.
