In a bid to incentivise States to move towards tuberculosis-free status, the Centre has floated a plan in which States will receive up to ₹1 crore in cash funding if they bring their patient-case load down.
“If a State brings down the TB incidence by 80 per cent, we will award them ₹1 crore; if the incidence reduces by 60 per cent, they will be paid ₹75 lakh; a 40 per cent reduction will attract a prize of ₹50 lakh, and a 20 per cent reduction will see an infused additional funding of ₹25 lakh,” said Vikas Sheel, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
The MoHFW is encouraging the districts to work towards decreasing TB burden too, and the districts will be paid ₹10 lakh for 80 per cent reduction; ₹5 lakh for 60 per cent reduction; ₹3 lakh for 40 per cent decline and ₹1 lakh for a 20 per cent decline, said Sheel. “By March 2021, we are confident that all districts will reduce the incidence of TB by at least 20 per cent.
Betul district in Madhya Pradesh has committed to as much as 60 per cent reduction by 2021. This is encouraging,” said Sheel.
States ranked
To track State-wise performance towards elimination of tuberculosis, the Centre has introduced a ranking system. Bihar has been ranked at the bottom with a score of 57.19, while Gujarat has been leading efforts to eleminate TB elimination with a score of 85.09.
Four States – Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — score below 70, while the top performing States that have scored over 80 are Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.
There are an estimated 26 lakh TB patients in India, according to World Health Organisation (WHO), of which 23.98 lakh patients were registered with the MoHFW in 2019. “Three lakh patients are still missing. We are trying hard to bridge this gap,” said Sheel.
K Sachdeva, Deputy Director-General at Central TB Division, said that it implies reducing the cases to such a number that it is no longer a public health threat. “This will mean that the case reduction will have to come down to 80 per cent in 2025, of what it was in 2015,” he added.