Health dept’s campaign for TB patients

Kanpur: The health department has launched a special campaign under the National TB Abolition Programme between August 23 and September 30 to identify TB patients. The tuberculosis patients will be identified though the health and wellness centres.
District TB Officer Dr AP Mishra said the Central government had fixed the target to identify around 22,000 TB patients in the current year in which around 50 percent of patients had been identified till July 26 last.
The sputum test of potential tuberculosis patients has to be done through district health and wellness centres to identify the remaining TB patients.
He said the community health officers (CHOs), posted at these centres, will assist in the identification, investigation, treatment and help the tuberculosis patients under the Nikshay Nutrition Scheme. They will identify people with possible tuberculosis symptoms and collect their sputum samples. After this, the CHOs will send the collected samples to the nearest testing centre.
If the report is positive, the patient will be registered on the Nikshay portal and their treatment will start. He said that the areas which are outside the purview of the health and wellness centre will be visited by ASHA workers who will visit homes of the TB patients and advise them to take regular medicines for six months and inform them about the ill effects of not taking medicines, the CHO said.
The CHO would select three high priority areas. These will be the areas which are in remote areas from the health and wellness centres, the Covid affected areas and the areas from where maximum TB and the Covid patients were identified in the last two years, he said.
Seminars and poster competitions on tuberculosis will be organized every week in one of the schools located in the area of the health and wellness centre to create awareness about TB among students. tnn