Srinagar: Two more districts in Kashmir have been declared as tuberculosis (TB) free.
With this Kashmir division has three TB free districts which include Budgam, Anantnag and Pulwama.
Besides that, Srinagar has got a gold medal under sub-national TB certification.
Dr Adfar Yaseen, State Tuberculosis Officer (STO) told Greater Kashmir that two more districts have been given the TB elimination certification. “ Budgam, Anantnag and Pulwama are now TB free districts. Other districts, Srinagar and Kupwara have also achieved the target and have been placed in the gold category. Baramulla is still in the bronze category,” she said.
She said after TB elimination, “our focus will be on the eradication phase.” “We have to complete our target by 2025.All our districts except Baramulla have completed that target,” Dr Adhfar said.
She said that their target is to make every district TB free by 2025.
There are four kinds of acknowledgment for meeting case reduction objectives, with TB-free status representing an 80 percent reduction taking the top rank.
The other categories are gold medal (over 60 percent reduction), silver medal (over 40 percent reduction), and bronze medal (over 20 percent reduction).
Kashmir has recorded over 3376 Tuberculosis (TB) cases in 2022, with Srinagar on the top of the list with 1465 cases.
As per the data, there has been a sharp decline in TB cases in Kashmir division as compared to 2021.
In 2021, Kashmir division reported 3442 TB cases and in 2020 due to COVID-19 and less screening the number was 2840.
Out of 3376 TB cases in 2022, Srinagar district reported 1465 cases, followed by Anantnag district with 665 cases, Baramulla registered 599 TB cases, Kupwara district reported 361 cases, Pulwama 172 cases and Budgam district reported 114 TB cases in 2022.
Earlier, Secretary Health and Medical Education, Bhupinder Kumar had said that the UT Government is fully committed to achieve the ambitious target of elimination of TB by 2025, ahead of the national target of 2030 under Pradhan Mantri TB Mukht Bharat Abhiyan (PMTBMBA).
