The Union Health Ministry has finally made tuberculosis (TB) a mandatory notifiable disease with immediate effect following demands from public health experts.
This will ensure proper detection and management of TB patients who escape the government’s TB control programme.
The notification — sent to all states on May 7 — implies that if a new TB patient is detected by any private institution or hospital or doctors, it is mandatory for them to inform the government about the each case and the kind of treatment provided to these patients.
By expanding the diagnosis net followed by appropriate treatment monitored by the government, the move is expected to eventually bring down new drug resistant TB cases, emerging as a public health threat for India.
India accounts for more than half of South East Asia’s drug resistant tuberculosis cases. Multi drug Resistant TB prevalence is estimated to be 2.3 per cent among new cases and 12-17 per cent among re-treatment cases.
TB kills two Indians every three minutes and a daily toll of 1,000, it continues to be a major public health problem accounting for substantial morbidity and mortality. As the notification of TB cases is expected to help patients with better access to quality diagnosis and treatment, it may curb the doctor-hopping practice for TB patients in the private sector.
Most of the time, patients frequently change doctors without proper diagnosis and fail to complete the full course of TB medicine spread over few months. In the hope of quick cure, the patients start looking for new medicines from private sector doctors.
The practice leads to drug-resistance. The notification will also aid the National TB Control Programme to realistically estimate TB disease burden, plan resources and control measures commensurate with the actual burden of disease.
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