UTTARAKHAND: Kamlesh Kumar Thakur is a tuberculosis survivor. Uttarakhand’s health department has declared him a ‘TB champion’ for his efforts to spread awareness about the disease and the fact that it is curable. Kamlesh’s journey to hell and back began in 2010 when he was barely 18 years old. He arrived in Uttarakhand from Bihar looking for a job after completing his graduation. Soon he realized he had twin battles at hand: finding a job and fighting TB.
Kamlesh is the youngest of six siblings of Brahmanand Thakur, a farmer in Bihar’s Chhapra district. No one in the family had a history of TB. A teenager still, Kamlesh worked in an air conditioner manufacturing unit in the Selakui industrial area of Dehradun. A few months into the job, he developed symptoms like laziness, irritability, and loss of appetite. A doctor in a private hospital offered treatment that continued for two years.
However, Kamlesh was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in 2013. The doctor’s treatment appeared to have worked. However, a couple of years later, Kamlesh realized he had become tuberculosis reactive. Pulmonary tuberculosis is a contagious bacterial infection that involves the lungs and may spread to other organs. TB is contagious, which means the bacteria are easily spread from an infected person.
One can get TB by breathing in air droplets from the cough or sneeze of an infected person. His condition deteriorated after investigations revealed that he was a case of multidrug resistance tuberculosis (MDR). In 2016 he was admitted to Mahant Indresh Hospital and from there he was shifted to the intensive care unit of Jollygrant Hospital for eight days.
“I felt my end was near,” recalls Kamlesh. “I wanted to live. Was it so difficult to live, I always wondered,” says Kamlesh. Then one day, he decided to live and be an example for others like him. Today, Kamlesh, like many others, has joined the mainstream, winning the battle of life against TB. With a fresh lease on life, Kamlesh – now in his 30s – meets TB patients in his area in Dehradun’s Selakui daily and distributes reading material that highlights TB’s prevention and necessary guidelines to those afflicted by the disease.
Mansingh, who belongs to Madhya Pradesh, Jebunnisa, a resident of Selakui, Sahana from Bareilly and Nazia Bano from Pilibhit are some of the TB survivors thanks to Kamlesh's inspiration. Kamlesh has a diploma from the Central Institute of Plastic Engineering (CEPT) Lucknow. His wife Radha, a graduate in science, says Kamlesh is obsessed with fighting tuberculosis. She manages their shop in his absence. Kamlesh distributes TB prevention and information prescriptions to patients in the Sahaspur primary health centre and to TB patients daily. “I have only one objective in life: making Uttarakhand free of TB,” says Kamlesh.