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Govt plan to provides monetary benefits for private TB doctors, patients

 

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The draft National Strategic Plan for the Eradication of Tuberculosis (2017-2025), which will be implemented shortly, offers benefits that include Rs2,000 for patients visiting private sector physicians. The Center is considering incentives for private doctors treating TB patients, as well as financial benefits and free medicines for those visiting them as part of its "aggressive" strategy to eliminate the disease.

Union health Minister JP Nadda at a demonstration to mark World TB Day announced Friday that the NSP will be finalized in a month.

TB is India's "severest" health crisis and kills an estimated 1,400 people a day, the NSP draft says. The incentives offered to the private tuberculosis care provider are Rs 250 per case of tuberculosis diagnosed according to Tuberculosis Care Standards in India (SCTI), Rs 250 at the end of each month of treatment and Rs 500 at the end of the full course of TB Treatment. It also says, for notification and management of a drug- sensitive patient over 6-9 months as per STCI, a private TB care provider will be eligible to receive Rs 2,750.

India also has more than one million "missing" cases each year that are not notified and most remain undiagnosed or inexplicably and insufficiently diagnosed, and treated in the private sector, the draft document said. "To address financial and nutritional hardship patient and family undergo due to TB, and to reduce catastrophic cost to patients, cash incentive of Rs 2,000 will be provided for every TB patient through Direct Beneficiary Transfer," the draft said.

 

The Ministry of Health will develop a plan that also provides free medicines for TB patients to doctors or private institutes. By 2015, tuberculosis had killed 1.8 million people and six countries - India, Indonesia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa - accounted for 60% of the total Of tuberculosis cases in the world.

"The Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) notified 17.5 lakh TB patients in 2016, from both public and private sectors, and 33,820 drug-resistant TB patients are notified additionally," the latest TB report released by the government said..

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