Despite the availability of effective medical therapy since long, Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the top five causes of death in India . In fact, the country is infamously termed, the hub of multi drug-resistant (DR) TB . Poor primary healthcare infrastructure in rural areas, un-monitored private healthcare, poverty, increasing affliction of diseases that compromise immune systems (e.g. HIV, diabetes, cancer), and rise in smoking and tobacco consumption are the main reasons of this huge disease burden.
The government has been grossly underestimating the incidence of TB for over 15 years, mainly due to the undercounting of TB cases in the private sector. Having only recently recognized the real scale of the disease burden ( 2.8 million new TB cases in 2015 ), the health ministry has begun work on a new National Strategic Plan to completely eradicate TB by 2025 . The success of this mission…
