Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan

Governance Issues Health

Context: Recently, the President of India Droupadi Murmu virtually launched the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan.

India has the world’s highest tuberculosis (TB) burden, with an estimated 26 lakh people contracting the disease and approximately 4 lakh people dying from the disease every year.
TB usually affects the most economically productive age group of society resulting in a significant loss of lives, working days and income resulting in poverty.
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is implementing a National Strategic Plan with the goal to achieve SDG End TB targets by 2025.

To provide additional patient support to improve treatment outcomes of TB patients.
Augment community involvement in meeting India’s commitment to end TB by 2025.
Leverage Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities.
The ‘Ni-kshay Mitra initiative’ was also launched which forms a vital component of the Abhiyaan.
The Ni-kshay Mitra portal provides a platform for donors to provide various forms of support to those undergoing TB treatment.
The minimum period of commitment for providing additional support to the TB patient shall be one year.
This program includes co-operative societies, corporates, elected representatives, individuals, institutions, non-governmental organisations, political parties who can support by adopting health facilities (for individual donors), blocks/urban wards/districts/states for accelerating response against TB.
The State and district administration will support Ni-kshay Mitras in prioritising districts and provide guidance on critical gap analysis and district-specific needs.
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 National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) to all TB patients notified from both the public and private sectors.

This will increase the active awareness and involvement of society in the fight against tuberculosis.
The involvement of the community also helps in the reduction of stigma.
Additional support to the TB patient shall also result in the reduction of out-of-pocket expenditure.
Improved nutrition will result in better treatment outcomes.

The approach to eradicating TB requires a multi-sectoral response to address the social determinants like nutritional support, living and working conditions, and an increase in access to diagnostic and treatment services.
Although the efforts of the government are yielding significant results, the community and the institutions in the society can play a critical role in filling gaps and addressing social determinants, thereby contributing to the national goal.

This Abhiyan is in line with PM Modi’s call to end TB in the country by 2025, five years ahead of the SDG target of 2030 at the Delhi End TB Summit in March 2018. This is the right step towards garnering community support for a patient-centric health system.