With around 2,000 registered Ni-kshay Mitras in Karnataka, who have adopted Tuberculosis (TB) patients, Karnataka is among the top five States in the country. Overall, 29,831 Ni-kshay Mitras have been registered in the country.
The Union Health Ministry launched the “adopt a TB patient” (Ni-kshay Mitras) initiative on September 9 to fill the critical “community’’ elements into India’s fight towards the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan aimed at eliminating TB by 2025. The initiative allows any individual to adopt one or more TB patients and look after their nutritional and medical needs.
Following a review of TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan conducted by the Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Friday, Arundathi Chandrashekar, State Mission Director, National Health Mission, held a State-level review with district TB officials with focus on scaling up the campaign.
State Health Commissioner Randeep D., who has adopted a TB patient, said improved nutritional status and weight gain in TB patients results in a better treatment outcome. He appealed to people to come forward and enrol as Ni-kshay Mitras.
While the State reported 72,703 notified TB cases in 2021, as many as 58,982 cases (including 14,381 private notifications) have been reported this year till September 30. Of the 58,982 notified patients, 37,333 are still under treatment.
Consent for support
State Deputy Director (TB) Ansar Ahmed told The Hindu on Wednesday that only 76.3% (28,493) of the 37,333 patients under treatment have consented to receive community support. While 2,534 patients have declined community support, the consent of remaining is pending, he said.
He said the State is doing its best to identify missed TB cases by increasing the number of presumptive tests. “To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-3) target for TB (Baseline 2015), we need to reduce TB incidence rate by 80% and TB deaths by 90%. The current death rate is 5.5%,” Dr Ahmed said.
He said the State was focussing on early diagnosis by taking up biannual active case finding activity, differentiated TB case finding activity that involves triaging and risk assessment of all diagnosed TB patients, death audits to identify the cause of death and TB and comorbidities linkage activities.
Who can register?
Apart from individuals, co-operative societies, corporates, elected representatives, institutions, non-governmental organisations, political parties and partners who can support by adopting the health facilities (for individual donor), blocks/urban wards/districts/States for accelerating the response against TB to complement the government efforts, as per the district-specific requirements in coordination with the district administration can register as Ni-kshay Mitras.
The 1,909 registered Ni-kshay Mitras in the State include 1,480 individuals, 25 elected representatives and 89 NGOs. Sources said a MP from the State is likely to adopt all the TB patients under treatment in Bengaluru Rural shortly.
The support provided to the patient under this initiative is in addition to the free diagnostics, free drugs and Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana provided by the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) to all the TB patients notified from both the public and the private sector.
Dr. Ansar Ahmed said community support will help achieve the SDG target to eliminate TB by 2025.
