Eliminating tuberculosis within a generation -Governance Now

Eliminating tuberculosis within a generation

Published ahead of World TB Day (24 March 2019), The Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis estimates that there are significant financial benefits of reducing TB mortality.

GN Bureau | March 22, 2019

#Lancet Commission #World TB Day #tuberculosis #India #deaths #disease

Published ahead of World TB Day (24 March 2019), The Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis estimates that there are significant financial benefits of reducing TB mortality. With the country shouldering one-fourth of the global burden and a predominant number of patients accessing care in the private sector, the Lancet Commission’s report says that the country can save 8 million lives over the next 30 years by providing subsidized tests and supporting patients to complete tuberculosis treatment.

Here are the key highlights from the report:

-Tuberculosis has killed more than 1.6 million people a year in 2017, more people than any other infectious disease

-Currently more than a third of TB cases (35%) are not diagnosed or treated.

-India can save 8 million lives over the next 30 years by providing subsidized tests and supporting patients to complete tuberculosis treatment.

-The savings from averting a TB death are estimated to be three times the costs, and may be much greater in many countries.

-The saved lives would constitute over a quarter of total deaths (28%) due to tuberculosis. This would cost an extra US$290 million each year, which is significantly less than India’s US$32 billion losses associated with TB mortality each year.

-The UN and WHO have declared TB a health crisis and made ending the disease a global priority. This included ambitious goals to treat 40 million people, and to prevent 30 million new cases between 2018-2022.

-India can increase domestic expenditure on TB by 400% over the next 5 years by increasing the distribution of public resources to health, pooling financing, and allocating tax revenues to health.

-Priorities include availability of high quality diagnostic tests and treatments for all people with active TB in high burden areas.

Comments

Other News

Cabinet approves Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme

The union cabinet chaired by PM Narendra Modi has approved the Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS) with a budgetary outlay of Rs 62,500 crore. It aims to further scale up the production, deepen domestic value addition, strengthen supply chain resilience, enhance global competitiveness. It

Building infrastructure is only half the job

Recent stories of stolen railway wires, disappearing communication towers and missing public infrastructure are often treated as bizarre law-and-order failures of India. Yet they raise a more fundamental question. Why does the State often discover the disappearance of a public asset only after it has alrea

New Delhi’s Indo-Pacific strategy enters a new phase

India appears to be investing fresh dynamism in its Indo-Pacific strategy. At the time when the US, under president Donald Trump, has adopted a conciliatory approach towards China and has changed the name of America’s Indo-Pacific Command to just Pacific Command, India has quietly moved towards con

CAG flags major fiscal lapses in Maharashtra

Maharashtra`s fiscal management has come under sharp scrutiny after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, in its State Finances Audit Report for 2024-25, flagged significant budgetary inefficiencies, accounting irregularities, understatement of key fiscal indicators and widespread governanc

The health sector research we are not doing

Some neglect is loud. This kind is quiet. It sits in research never commissioned, data never collected, questions never asked. In South Asia, that quiet has let the region’s worst health problems stay understudied, underfunded, and out of sight of those who could act.

Study flags accessibility and last-mile challenges on Mumbai Metro Aqua Line

Mumbai Metro Line 3 (Aqua Line), the city`s first fully underground metro corridor and one of its largest public transport investments, represents a major engineering achievement and has been widely welcomed by commuters. However, the overall commuter experience continues to be constrained by accessibili