OdishaPlus Bureau
Odisha has climbed several notches in the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) with better performance and district like Malkangiri has shown the best results. Odisha has risen to the 13th position from the 24th position as a result of targeted intervention and continuous monitoring from December 2018 to September 2019 period. This was revealed during the State level RNTCP quarterly review meeting chaired by Mission Director (MD) National Health Mission (NHM) Shalini Pandit recently
Pursuing quality DOTS expansion and enhancement, by improving the case finding are cure through an effective patient-centered approach to reach all patients, the people, especially the poor, Odisha has taken lead.
Efforts of top-performing districts like Malkangiri, Rayagada, and Cuttack were applauded and District Program Coordinators of these districts took special initiatives to bring in improvement. Looking at the improved performance and interest among the District Program Coordinators, Pandit urged the officials to target achieving the first rank for the State in RNTCP.
She reviewed all the indicators like treatment success rate, tuberculosis notification achievement, direct benefit transfer (DBT) for nutritional support to tuberculosis patients under the Nikshay Poshan Yojana (NPY) and spending on the RNTCP.
NPY-DBT is needed to be accelerated and payment of incentive at least to 80 percent of the targeted beneficiaries, she directed the officials.
Similarly, she also stressed ensuring at least 75 per cent treatment success rate of TB against total TB notification in the districts. The District Program Coordinators have been assigned target to achieve under various indicators and they were instructed to achieve the target. Expenditure of at least 75 percent of the approved Budget was stipulated for the districts.
Pandit also reviewed TB-HIV co-morbidity related activities with officials of Odisha State AIDS Control Society (OSACS).
Establishment of a robust sample transportation system both in public and private sector requires improvement for which districts were asked to consider any of the sample transport mechanism like Hub and Spoke, Public Private Partnership (PPP), Postal Services and Human Carrier etc.
In order to make available human resources for RNTCP, all the districts were asked to fill up all sanctioned posts by December as a majority of the districts have failed in this regard barring Cuttack, Mayurbhanj, and Kandhamal. All the districts were instructed to ensure the treatment of all drug-resistant (DR) TB patients within 15 days of diagnosis in their own DR TB Wards.