Union Minister Anupriya Patel: India steadily progressing towards eliminating TB by 2025

 Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Smt. Anupriya Patel inaugurated the India Innovation Summit - Pioneering Solutions to End TB, at Bharat Mandapam Convention Centre.

The Summit is being organized jointly by the Department of Health Research-Indian Council of Medical Research (DHR-ICMR) and the Central TB Division (CTD), Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW). The summit aims to accelerate India's progress towards TB elimination by 2025.

Addressing the gathering, Anupriya Patel highlighted India’s remarkable progress in TB control and the pivotal role of innovation in this mission.

Citing the WHO’s Global TB Report 2024, Anupriya Patel stated that “the incidence rate of TB in India has shown a 17.7% decline from 237 per lakh population in 2015 to 195 per lakh population in 2023. TB deaths have reduced by 21.4% from 28 per lakh population in 2015 to 22 per lakh population in 2023.”

The Union Minister of State also highlighted the new initiatives under NTEP.

A more efficacious treatment regimen, mBPaL (Bedaquiline, Pretomanid, Linezolid (300mg) has also been introduced for drug-resistant TB which is 80% more efficacious for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) and will reduce treatment duration to 6 months.”

She also highlighted the Energy Dense Nutritional Support (EDNS), offered to under-nourished TB patients during the first 2 months of their treatment along with drugs.

Talking about the Ni-kshay Mitra Initiative that was launched with the objectives to provide additional support to TB patients in order to improve treatment outcomes, augment community involvement and leverage Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities, Smt. Patel stated that this initiative was launched to bring together people from all backgrounds into a ‘Jan Andolan’ and escalate the progress toward TB elimination.”

She further added that “the Government has doubled the financial assistance under Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana (NPY) for nutritional support to TB patients from Rs 500/per month/per patient to Rs 1,000 per month per patient effective from 1st November 2024 while the Ni-kshay Mitra Initiative has also been expanded wherein food baskets to TB patients and their household contacts are being provided.