A People’s Movement For A Public Health Success Story

The govt’s scheme connecting poor TB patients who need help to better-off Indians willing to help has made a promising start. It has the potential to make India TB-free sooner than the WHO deadline

- DurgeshNandan.Jha

New Delhi: One out of every four TB patients in the world is in India. In absolute numbers, that’s 26.9 lakh Indians, as per current data.

A huge majority of those TB patients are poor. TB treatment is free, funded by the government, which also provides some money for maintaining a proper diet.

But this is a disease that hits the poor really hard – because treatment calls for periods of rest and regular intake of nutritious food over a period of months, and both are often out of reach for those who live on daily, modest incomes.

What if, though, these poor TB patients had friends, friends who helped them tide over the periods they are out of work and made sure they were on recommended diets?

This was the idea that launched GoI’s Ni-Kshay Mitra initiative – connecting poor TB patients who need help and better-off citizens who can and are willing to help.

It followed a target set by PM Modi that India must eradicate TB by 2025, five years before the WHO deadline of 2030.

It’s early days – the scheme was launched on September 9, although preparatory work had begun earlier – but already 15,415 large-hearted friends have adopted 9.56 lakh poor TB patients across the country.

Even better news is that those coming forward to help are not just individuals (8,595), but companies (294), political organisations (629), elected representatives (534) and NGOs (1,291).

The stories are heart-warming.