A latest report by Government of India on State-wise health indicators has painted a grim picture about progress made towards eradication of Tuberculosis (TB) in J&K, revealing that treatment success rate has fallen in the state in recent years.
The NITI Aayog’s report, “Healthy States Progressive India”has shown decline in the treatment success rate of new microbiologicallyconfirmed cases in 2016, the reference year, in comparison to 2015, the baseyear.
While the treatment rate was 88.3% in the base year, it fellto 85% in the reference year. The Government of India has set a target of =85%success rate for TB treatment.
An official at Revised National Tuberculosis Program (RNTCP)said the treatment success rate was deducted by recording a new patient,putting him/her on treatment, completion of treatment, declaring the patienttreated and recording it onto the database of Nikshay – an online monitoringsystem and database for TB control program.
Since TB is a notifiable disease all patients need to benotified and recorded into the database.
However, low notification of cases, especially from privatesector, has been a concern vis-à-vis the program across India, includingJ&K.
In terms of TB notification, J&K has shown marginalimprovement. While in base year (2016), TB notification was recorded at 72 (per100,000 population), in 2017, the reference year, an improvement of just twopoints was recorded and the figure stood at 74.
Low notification of tuberculosis reflects on the treatmentcompliance and goal of TB eradication, as per RNTCP.
However, officials working with State’s TB Control programmechallenged the findings, terming the figures as ‘flawed data’.
Dr Syed Tasneem, WHO consultant for TB control program inJ&K said the State was “progressing well” on all fronts regarding TB control.
“It is just that some districts have not entered requisitedata diligently on Nikshay database and that has resulted in these figures (inthe Union government report),” she said.
She added that the treatment success rate of TB in J&Kwas around 90 percent, above the RNTCP benchmark.
Regarding marginal improvement on parameter of TBnotification, she said, “In public sector, we are seeing better progress andmore and more hospitals, even from far flung areas are regularly updating theTB data, including new patients.”
However, she said it was the private sector where thenotification of the disease was a concern. “We are far behind the targets of TBnotification in the private sector,” she said.
Epidemiologist and State Tuberculosis Officer withDirectorate of Health Services (Kashmir), Dr Rehana Kaunsar also contradictedthe Government of India findings.
“We have a treatment success rate of nearly 100 percent,”she said while adding that two aspirational districts, Baramulla and Kupwara,were having “exceptional progress” in terms of TB control.
As per the Government of India data, between 2014 and 2016,over 30,000 new cases of TB were notified in J&K.