BENGALURU: In the first quarter this year, the public sector hospitals in the state have already notified 7,540 tuberculosis cases and private sector hospitals have notified 2,167 cases. Yet, the state has only six drug resistant TB centres instead of having one in each district, which is the case in neighbouring Kerala.
Two of these centres don’t even have medical officers owing to low pay. Detection of paediatric TB cases in the state is also very low. While the national average is seven per cent of all TB cases, we are struggling with five per cent.
Come Monday, the Health Department will conduct ‘active case finding’ till July 31 in six districts, identified by the union government as ‘heavy-burden’ districts. The districts include Vijayapura, Bagalkot, Koppal, Ballari, Kalaburagi and Belagavi. The activity will also be taken up in Bengaluru Rural, Bengaluru Urban and Ramanagara.
Teams of two will conduct door-to-door surveys in slums and other vulnerable pockets. An estimated 11 per cent of the district’s population will be covered. If they show symptoms, they will be sent for sputum examination and chest X-ray, and will thereby be registered on the union government’s registry NIKSHAY that will track the patient from diagnosis to treatment outcome and monitor him/her for six months. About 15,447 members will be involved in screening high risk and vulnerable population of 44.39 lakh people.
The target groups for this campaign are slums, prison inmates, old age homes, mine workers, stone-crushing workers, construction site workers, refugee camps, populations known to drink raw milk, night shelters, populations known to eat uncooked meat, high-risk groups for HIV, homeless, street children, orphanages, unorganised labour, destitute homes, tea garden workers, asylums and villages largely seeking care from traditional healers.
Dr Sanjay Kanth, epidemiologist, state tuberculosis control programme, said, “There is a proposal to have drug resistant TB centres along with medical colleges. Rs 5 lakh is required to run each centre of which `1.25 lakh is required for civil works alone. At present Ballari and Kalaburagi centres don’t even have medical officers because they are paid `45,000, which is low according to them. Each centre will function only when there is a medical officer and programme officer.”