Maharashtra Health Department integrates TB screening into medical college family adoption programmes

Maharashtra Health Department, Maharashtra Health Department, Maharashtra Health Department in order to address the difficulty of delays in the identification of people with the Medical Faculties Medical College (FAP) to include active case finding (ACF) activities.

Active case finding (ACF) is one of the strategies used by the National Tuberculosis Elimination Program (NTEP) to detect missing PWTB.

Maharashtra State Health Services (TB and leprosy) Department co -director Sandeep Sangale issued a notification that directs colleges and universities to integrate TB scanning activities into the FAP and asked for the reports of the collected data to be sent to the relevant TB officers for further integration.

Movement, Maharashtra’s Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College and TB unit in the rural Pune villages of the TB unit after publishing a pilot program, from the door to door visits to the TB for the community scanning ACF activities. Swathi Njarekkattuvalappil, Saibal Adhya and Sanjivani Patil and Pune Region TB Center from Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College, including Sanjay Darade, wrote an offer to the State Health Department for ACF integration.

According to the proposal, Maharashtra has approximately 80 medical college (government and special/accepted) with an average annual recruitment of 150 students, each student has allocated 5 households for follow -up for the next 3 years. With this integration of TB Care with FAP, students can scan a cohort of 60,000 households (about 2.40,000 people) throughout the state each year and continue to follow at least for the next 3 years.

“The pilot program was about providing practical experience in individuals to detect possible TB for early stage treatment. This was about MBBS students asking the right questions and receiving training to detect symptoms for more diagnosis,” he said.

The pilot program was implemented in September last year, and five groups of 30-35 MBBS students working in four villages, including Pune’s Paud’s Bhukum and Ambarwet Grampanchayats, each of which was active in the case of active case findings, were implemented. At least 959 people were scanned, 10 were defined as hypothetical TB. The authors chose Paud because in 2022, 1,057 TB (13% of the total reported from Pune Rural) reported cases.

Maharashtra is among the leading contributions to the country’s TB load; In 2022, approximately 2.34 Lakh cases reported about 10% of the total reported cases in India. Almost 64% of the symptomatic population in India do not seek health care because it ignores the symptoms and lack of awareness.

Mrs. Njarekkattuvalappil, who spoke with Hindu, said, “The government is now issuing a notification for integration, and we will organize meetings with medical deans, directors and regional medical officers to explain the process including the questionnaire next week and to share all the important aspects of the study.” He said.