Newmai News Network
IMPHAL, March 22
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]housands of people in Manipur are suffering from Tuberculosis (TB) but the necessary treatments and tests are not provided as the patients and symptoms remain hidden and undiscovered, said Dr. Y. Gopalkrishna Singh, STO Manipur, while interacting with media persons at the state TB office located at Lamphel, Imphal.
With the approaching of the World TB Day, it will provide opportunity to raise awareness about the global and national epidemic of tuberculosis and solutions to support, control and eliminate the disease.
The Medical Directorate, Manipur State TB Society in collaboration with District TB Control Societies Imphal East and West Manipur is organising the 33 World TB Day 2014” on March 24 at Conference Hall, JNIMS in Porompat, Manipur under the theme “Reach the three million”, find treat and cure TB.There are about 9 million people a year who get affected with TB, and one-third of them do not get the TB services that they deserve. Many of these people are from the world’s poorest communities and are mostly migrants, miners, drug users and sex workers.
The world TB Day is a global effort to find, treat and cure the 3 million TB patients and accelerate progress towards zero TB death, infection, suffering and stigma.
Certain additional facilities have been provided in our state for treatment of TB. For diagnosis of the disease, new machines and equipments have been made available like Fluorescent Microscopy, Solid Culture (LJ media) > 900 cultures and CBNAAT: Molecular techniques: (August, 2013) > 100 tests.
The construction of the treatment site for drug resistant TB at Churachandpur is completed while at JNIMS, the site for the same is under construction which started in 2010. As such, TB patients are facing a lot of inconveniences due to the delay in construction work.
Under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), the number of TB cases detected in the year 2013 was 1941 and in the year 2012 it was 2291. The number of patients treated successfully with TB was 2379 in 2013 and 2677 in 2012. The total number of TB patients put under treatment was 2341 compared to 2744 in 2012. The number of deaths arising out of TB in 2013 decreased to 72 compared to 80 in 2012.
The improvement seen in the treatment type and decreasing of death cases suffering from TB is due to the awareness programmes organized to give sufficient knowledge of treatments and precautions to prevent it.
