How is Assam faring on the TB eradication front?

Published : Jun 26, 2022 18:00 IST “My husband is a buddhu,” 41-year-old Anita Bodo says through her tears. Such is the stigma of TB among the tribal people of Baksa district in north-western Assam that a patient and even his family face exclusion and loss of livelihood. “Our goal is to reduce the TB infection rate to 44 per lakh population by 2025 under the ongoing NTEP,” says Dr Avijit Basu, Joint Director and State TB Officer, Department of Health Services, Government of Assam. Close to 50,000 people die of the disease every year in India, where at the same time about a million cases are missed every year, says Dr Palash Talukdar, WHO Consultant, NTEP, Assam. In order to reach out to people in their communities, TB champions such as Anita Bodo and Bhabananda Das use tools provided by Lakhya Jyoti Bhuyan, Prasenjit Das, and Dinesh Talukdar, foot soldiers of the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, an NGO that works on TB, adolescent health, maternal neonatal and child health, and primary healthcare.