Gujarat, Tripura, and Nagaland Best Performing States in Annual TB Report 2020

With a focus on eliminating Tuberculosis(TB) from the country by 2025, in January 2020 the Government of India renamed the ‘National Tuberculosis Control Program’ to the ‘National Tuberculosis Elimination Program’. In a virtual event, the Annual TB Report 2020 was released on 24^th June 2020. The Report was released by Dr. Harsh Vardhan (Union Health Minister).

Highlights from the Report

• New cases notified in 2019 in India: 24.04 lakh. This as compared to 2018, amounts for a 14% increase in TB notification. Out of 24.04 lakh new cases, 6,64,584 cases were reported from the private healthcare sector.
• Expanded provision of financial assistance provided through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to beneficiaries of 4 schemes under the NIKSHAY System
• Almost every rural area in the country has been covered with the help of more than 4.5 lakh DOT Centres.
• Number of missing cases significantly reduced to 2.9 lakh as compared to above 10 lakh missing cases in 2017
• HIV testing for all notified TB patients increased to 81 % in 2019. This was 67% in 2018.

Best Performers

States were divided based on their population as larger and smaller states. All states having more than 50 lakh population were under larger states while states with less than 50 lakh population were under smaller states.

In the larger state category, Gujarat was awarded as the best-performing state followed by Andhra Pradesh and Himanchal Pradesh at 2^nd and 3^rd place. In smaller states, both Nagaland and Tripura were awarded as best performers.

Among Union Territories, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu was awarded as the best performer.

Month: Current Affairs - June, 2020