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Kochi : Health dept, pvt hosps tie up to provide free TB medicines

Kochi: Ernakulam is set to be the first district in the country where district health authorities have tied up with 100 private hospitals to provide free tuberculosis (TB) medicines and conduct sputum test to check TB drug resistance.

Along with this, TB patients being treated in these hospitals would be provided Rs 500 per month under the Nikshay Poshan Yojana during the treatment period.
In rest of the country, this money is only given to patients seeking treatment in government hospitals. The move is part of the state government’s effort to eliminate TB by 2020.

“In the initial phase, we will cover 100 hospitals. The plan is to reach out to all the private hospitals and clinics in the district. In the second phase, we would reach out to ayurveda and homeopathy hospitals. This is to ensure that no patient is denied free TB treatment in the district,” said Ernakulam district TB officer Dr Sharath Rao.

Recent studies revealed that approximately 30% of the TB cases in private sector across the state miss complete treatment. Currently, there are 24,500 confirmed pulmonary TB cases in the state. Of these, 8,000 seek treatment in private hospitals and they incur out of pocket expenditure.

The drug regimen is for six to nine months and costs around Rs 3,000, while the nucleic acid amplification tests to check TB drug resistance costs around Rs 6,000. The test samples would be collected from private hospitals and would be send to the labs at Ernakulam General Hospital or Kalamassery Medical College for tests.

“With this, what we envisage is rapid reduction in the number of TB cases across the state. We expect that the cases would reduce from 70 per one lakh population to five or six per lakh population,” said World Health Organisation (WHO) consultant on TB Dr Rakesh P S.

“This will also reduce the death due to TB and bring it down by 90%, and reduce catastrophic expenditure due to TB in terms of loss of wages or of pocket expenditure on medicines and tests,” said Dr Shibu Balakrishnan, medical consultant of WHO-revised national tuberculosis control programme technical assistance project.

Death due to TB is less than 1,000 in Kerala and almost 60% of the deaths are due to comorbidities (presence of one or more diseases co-occurring with a primary disease).

The TB burden of the state is expected to be low. Estimated annual risk of TB infection is only one-fifth of the national estimates. Ernakulam has reported TB cases 70 per 1 lakh population.

To ensure that there is proper follow-up of patients seeking treatment in private hospitals, the state government has already initiated system for TB elimination in private sector centres in 200 private hospitals across the state.

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