Sirsa Civil Hospital gets portable TB detection machine

Our Correspondent

Sirsa, March 26

Under the initiative to make India tuberculosis-free by 2025, the health department has introduced a portable handheld X-ray machine at the Civil Hospital (CH). As part of the campaign, health check-ups are being conducted across most villages of the district. Thirty-five villages in the district have been declared tuberculosis-free.

How the machine will work

• The machine has an in-built camera and will be connected to a laptop. An X-ray scan of the lungs will be taken and the report will be generated immediately detecting tuberculosis, if present. After this, the patient can be taken to the hospital for further examination. In the initial phase, there will be no need for patients to go to the hospital. Instead, department workers will visit villages and conduct X-ray scans to identify infections.

Previously, samples were collected to identify tuberculosis patients in villages, which took a considerable amount of time to be examined. With the introduction of this machine, identifying tuberculosis in patients would become easier and patients would be able to receive treatment sooner. The machine utilises artificial intelligence (AI).

Although the health department has initiated a vaccination campaign in the district to help eradicated tuberculosis there is apathy among people towards it. So far, only 3,735 people in the district have consented to getting a shot of the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine. The campaign is underway in 11 districts, including Ambala, Bhiwani, Hisar, Jhajjar, Kaithal, Jind, Panchkula, Rohtak, Sirsa, Mewat and Sonepat.

District Tuberculosis Officer Dr Gaurav Bhati explained that currently, there was only one machine available at the hospital and it would be used in areas where the number of patients was high. Through the machine, people would be easily screened and timely treatment would be provided without any risk of radiation.

“The goal is to make 334 villages of the district tuberculosis-free. Under the tuberculosis-free panchayat campaign, the health department declared 35 gram panchayats tuberculosis-free in 2023,” he added.

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