On the eve of World Tuberculosis Day, the World Health Organisation has applauded India’s efforts in fighting the disease but has also said that the government needs to be more dedicated to the cause to maintain the current level of progress.

The 2007 report on “Global tuberculosis control —surveillance, planning, financing”, released yesterday states that The Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme of India has achieved DOTS population coverage of all 632 districts. Since the inception of the revised programme in 1997, it has trained more than half a million staff, evaluated more than 24 million people with suspected TB, examined more than 100 million sputum slides, treated more than six million patients and probably prevented more than one million deaths.”

The report has ranked India as No. 1 among the 22 high burden countries on the basis of the estimated number of cases in 2005 and has cautioned the government. It states: “The rapid programme expansion has outpaced the capacity of national and state health authorities to supervise the programme effectively and to maintain high quality. Government action is needed to reverse declines in case detection and cure rates in some states.”

Among India’s other achievements highlighted in the report are the preparation of a plan for gradual implementation of multi drug resistant (MDR) TB management, increase in collaborative training on TB/HIV activities, development of a TB plan specifically for tribal population and a plan to monitor programme performance in the country’s poorest districts.

The WHO has also urged India to bring down its number of TB patients to 30 per 1 lakh population by 2015. However, Health ministry officials say that their target is 50 per cent of that and hope to achieve 15 patients per 1 lakh population. Currently the figure is 75 cases per lakh population that is down from 85 per lakh population.

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