GUWAHATI
Involving the community has helped devise strategies to break psychological barriers in the battle against tuberculosis in Assam and three other States, an initiative by a Karnataka-based trust has revealed.
The Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT) has been running a USAID-supported project on TB across four States — Assam, Bihar, Karnataka and Telangana — targeting the most vulnerable groups, such as mining and industrial workers, tea garden workers, migrants, the urban vulnerable, and tribal people.
The KHPT’s Assam project covers tea plantation workers in Dibrugarh, the tribal population in Baksa, and the urban vulnerable in Kamrup (Metro) district.
“A total of 625 TB patients and caregivers benefited from 99 care and support group meetings involving 315 community structures. The project clearly shows how community structures have contributed to TB response in the three districts, and their initiative has contributed to 72,168 [individuals] being screened,” Prasenjit Das, the project’s Assam head said.
KHPT’s programme director Rehana Begam said the project had begun with conducting a primary behavioural study and webinars to assess and dive deep into the contexts, barriers and other nuances surrounding the populations vulnerable to TB.
“A mapping exercise was subsequently undertaken to identify vulnerable clusters for implementing the planned initiatives and developing behavioural change solutions so that people overcome stigma and gender issues and come forward for detection and treatment,” she said.
“Concurrently, we focused on creating an environment of encouragement for the TB patient and caregivers by involving TB survivors who have experienced these problems and who extend support and take them through this journey. What is critical is the community voice that informs our strategy and every step of the action,” Ms. Begam said.
Avijit Basu, the State TB officer in Assam’s Department of Health Services, said the State government has been working on the goal of reducing the TB infection rate from 217 per lakh in 2015 to 44 per lakh by 2025 under the ongoing National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme.
According to the World Health Organization, India bears about a quarter of the world’s TB burden, with the disease killing close to half a million people in the country annually.
