Shimla, Sep 1: Himachal Pradesh government has set the target of controlling Tuberculosis (TB) by 2021-22 well before the nation’s target for 2025. State health and family welfare minister Kaul Singh Thakur said that controlling TB is amongst the top priorities of the government.
“State government is committed to improve the health of its people. National health programmes and schemes were being implemented as per national mandate. Health indicators of Himachal Pradesh is better than the national average and the State is striving hard to achieve the global standards.” the minister said.
He said that despite so many advances in diagnosis and treatment worldwide, TB is still number one infectious killer disease in the world killing 14 lakh people, out of which 4.8 lakh are in India alone. “Every year near 15000 new cases of TB are coming in Himachal Pradesh and at the same time nearly 8000-9000 TB patients seek treatment from private sector which is a big number,” he added.
Thakur said that Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) program performance in terms of case detection rate and treatment success rate of Himachal Pradesh is 77 percent and 90 percent respectively which are above the desired national target of 70 and 85 percent respectively.
He said that almost 38 percent of TB deaths are associated with the use of tobacco and prevalence of TB are three times as high among ever smokers as compared to those among never smokers. He said that state government has taken several innovative steps for effective tobacco control and has the strongest enforcement mechanisms as a result of which the state had achieved “Smoke Free State Status” in the year 2013.
