What is the issue?
India has seen slight progress in dealing with TB but much remains to be done.
What are the statistics?
- From an estimated 2.84 million new cases in 2015, the number dropped marginally to 2.79 million in 2016.
- In terms of mortality, the drop was from 0.51 million in 2015 to 0.43 million in 2016.
- The number of deaths and the incidence rate have been falling both globally and in India.
- Drug resistance has also increased drastically over the years.
- More than 0.58 million people had TB strains that were resistance to the drug ‘Rifampicin’ alone.
- Also, estimate of multi-drug-resistant TB cases increased marginally to 84,000.
- But only 33,000 people were enrolled for suitable treatment.
What are the targets?
- ‘End TB strategy‘envisions global reduction of 20% in incidence and 35% in mortality by 2020, taking 2015 as the base year.
- To reach that target, the global drop in incidence has to be 4-5% a year which is currently only 2%.
- Also, deaths should come down from the current 16% to 10%.
- Achieving the targets will largely hinge on India as it accounting for the highest TB incidence (23%) and mortality (26%) globally.
What is the strategy ahead?
- Notification - Recording and notifying the WHO about every diagnosed patient is an important first step.
- While notifying has considerably improved over the past few years, more than 25% gap between incidence & reporting still exists.
- Though notification was made mandatory in 2012, multiple surveys indicate large scale under-reporting.
- Prevention - Baby steps have been taken to offer preventive TB treatment to a small (5%) number of people who are HIV-positive.
- Also, few children who were faced with a higher risk of contracting TB were also offered such care.
- Funding - Notably, of the total fund of $500 million for handling TB, domestic funding has accounted for 74%.
- While, improved domestic funding is a positive, much more is needed in terms of funds and institutional commitments.
Source: The Hindu
