HYDERABAD: Telangana Revised National Tuberculosis Programme’s collaboration with Johnson & Johnson to collect and transport sputum of tuberculosis patients in private hospitals has successfully mapped 175 private hubs and collected and transported 977 private sputum samples to the nearest public CBNAAT lab free-of-cost, in three months.
Their campaign on Hyderabad Metro has reportedly exhibited an increase of 8.84 per cent in the public sector TB notifications in Hyderabad, Rangareddy, and Medchal districts since August 2019. Speaking to Express, Dr A Rajesham, Joint Director for RNTCP Telangana, said, “While it is easy to monitor new and recurring cases of TB in public hospitals, the process is much more difficult in private healthcare institutions as they often do not report the cases to us. The collaboration has helped us track cases from private hospitals. However, a proper review will be possible only after the pilot completes six-months.”
The Telangana State’s RNTCP cell recognises this challenge and is implementing a distinctive private sector engagement model, along with TB Alert India, to prevent diagnostic and treatment delays. The SCT model was initiated in June 2019 and will be piloted for a period of one year across five districts of Telangana, including, Warangal urban, Karimnagar, Nalgonda, and Khammam.
According to Telangana RNTCP’s official data, the model has successfully delivered back 871 reports of the 977 collected (with 233 positive TB and 24 positive MDR-TB results) to respective private physicians within just 2.5 days, while the rest 106 reports will be reflected in the consecutive month. This model has been instrumental in linking all 24 MDR TB patients to public health posts.
Additionally, J&J also ran a campaign with Hyderabad Metro wherein a total of 45 Metro trains carry the TB awareness message in form of 30-second videos on all digital screens of each train all day. According to Sarthak Ranade, Managing Director, Janssen India, Johnson & Johnson Private Limited, “Since August 2019, around 450,000 commuters are being reached on a daily basis. This campaign has exhibited an increase of 8.84 per cent in the public sector TB notifications in Hyderabad, Rangareddy, and Medchal districts which hold 10 million population.”