The Hindu Business Line : Corporates urged to get involved in TB control plan

EVEN as India was given a pat on its back for the Revised National Tuberculosis (TB) Control Programme (RNTCP), India Inc came in for the stick for not doing enough to support the programme.

"The Government has decided to bring the entire country under the RNTCP, which over the last five years has helped control the disease. We will be working with the Labour Ministry to make it available through the ESI and corporate health facilities. The corporate sector has not been doing enough to get involved with the programme and we have asked the Confederation of Indian Industry to initiate the effort," said Mr Deepak Gupta, Joint Secretary with the Union Health Ministry.

Meanwhile, according to a Joint Review mission by the department of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO), the RNTCP has been a success by covering over two million patients in the country through the DOTS strategy. More than 3,50,000 deaths have been prevented through the implementation of the programme in India, pointed out Dr Leopold Blanc, Coordinator, TB strategy and operations, with the Geneva-based WHO. He said controlling TB in India was a tremendous challenge as 1.8 million people on an average developed the disease every year of which 8,00,000 were infectious. Till recently, 4,00,000 people died of it, in other words about 1,000 people every day.

Further, he observed, that DOTS — the programme to control TB had been expanding across the world and though multi-drug resistance was an issue globally, it was not an issue in India, he said.

With a World Bank credit and technical and financial support from the WHO, Canadian International Development Agency, Global Drug Facility(GDF), Department of International Development — the RNTCP has successfully covered 740 million people, which is seventy per cent of the country's total population, said Mr Blanc.

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