Kullu district second worst affected by TB in India

Dipender Manta

Tribune News Service

Kullu, January 15

Kullu district, followed by Mandi and Solan, is among the top 50 districts which has most TB patients, raising alarm for the health authority to take effective steps to curb it. The high number of patients has taken the district to number two slot in the country.

The health authority will launch a campaign to detect the cases in Kullu, Mandi and Solan from January 16 to January 30. Sources said it was found that there was a drastic surge in TB patients in Kullu every year despite awareness drives.

District Health Officer, Kullu, Sushil Chander told The Tribune here today that the focus would be to detect the TB patients in remote areas. Special teams of paramedical staff and doctors had been constituted to work over it, who would visit the areas.

District Health Officer, Mandi, Joginder Thakur said the motive behind the campaign would be to eradicate social stigma and encourage people to visit nearby government hospital for treatment, whenever they would found the symptoms of the disease.

“During campaign, sputum samples of patients will be collected to detect the disease,” he added.

This programme was launched by the Centre to provide assistance to states for search in those pockets from where patients were not visiting health centres, which aggravated the situation.

Health Minister Kaul Singh Thakur said the state government would launch daily drug treatment for TB patients in the coming days to deal with the menace.

“There are many patients under private care who are not regular in their treatment. Skipping drugs or leaving the treatment midway can lead to multi-drug resistant TB or in the worst case even death,” he added.