Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, said that under PM Modi, India has accorded high priority for ending tuberculosis by 2025, five years before the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
Addressing the ministers of Member Nations of WHO, Heads, and Representatives of UN Agencies and partner organizations, he reportedly said, "In India, under the guidance of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, India has accorded high priority for ending tuberculosis by 2025, five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)."
"Tuberculosis has been in existence since time immemorial and continues to remain a major global public health problem. Despite the progress made over the last decade, TB remains the leading infectious killer disease worldwide," he added.
While praising India's efforts in its fight against TB, he said, "With bold and innovative policies supported by commensurate resources, India has taken several critical steps towards ending TB. We have significantly reduced the number of missing TB patients from one million in 2016 to less than 0.5 million in 2019, with 2.4 million cases notified during the year. Most importantly, a third of these notifications were contributed by the private sector. With the scale-up of rapid molecular diagnostics in every district of the country, we were able to identify over 66,000 drug-resistant TB patients in 2019."
Lauding India's efforts further, the Minister added, "We reached a historic low in the month of April with lockdown in full force, but through sustained efforts, we have managed an increase of 43 per cent in May and another 25 per cent in June."
