SALEM: Namakkal district has been selected to receive the bronze medal from the Union Government for reducing tuberculosis (TB) cases. Bronze medal is given if cases are brought down by more than 20 per cent.
According to sources in the health department, eight districts from Tamil Nadu submitted claims, through the State government. for the year 2021. These were verified by ICMR- National Institute for Research in TB (ICMR-NIRT) in February-March 2021 in collaboration with ICMC- National Institute of Epidemiology (ICMR-NIE), Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM) and WHO India.
Field level verification through programme records and patient interviews, verifying of drug consumption data (public sector and drug sale date in private sector) through review of records and interaction with private practitioners and chemists and district level survey of estimating TB incidence and under-reporting in randomly selected villages in the districts are taken into consideration by the Ministry. After this, the awards were announced.
In 2020, the Union Health Ministry rolled out the Sub-National Certification of Progress Towards TB Free Status programme aimed at eradicating TB by the year 2025. It awards gold medal to districts which reduce cases by 60 per cent, compared with cases in 2015, silver medal for reducing 40 percent cases and bronze medal for reducing 20 percent cases. Nilgiris bagged the silver medal, while Kanniyakumari, Karur, Nagapattinam, Namakkal, Sivaganga and Villupuram districts bagged bronze medal.
District Deputy Director for TB Dr R Vasudevan said Namakkal had 895 case in 2015 and this has come down to 715 now. “We reduced more than 20 percent of TB cases in the district.
In the last five years, 653 people died of the disease. All of them came for treatment at the eleventh hour.”
“Along with the district administration, we plan to conduct medical camps in every block and visit individual houses to detect TB patients early. We monitor patients who are already getting treatment. Under Nikshay Poshan Yojana (NPY) `500 monthly is provided for nutritional support to TB patients till completion of treatment. A normal patient will get cured in six months and for the severe category it needs six to nine months. As TB spreads through air, we insist TB patients to wear masks whenever they step out of their homes. Due to Covid-19, people used to wear masks which helped prevent of TB drastically. But cases started to reduce in Namakkal district from 2017. Further, Covid patients and those with symptoms were advised x-ray and CT scan which helped detect TB,” he added.