PANAJI
Logging new tuberculosis cases at the rate of five daily, Goa is struggling to achieve targets in the quest to achieve the ambitious goal set by the Union Ministry for Health and Family Welfare to eradicate the disease in the country by the end of next year.
In the nine months between January and September this year, Goa added 1,532 new TB patients and only 99 were declared cured of the disease.
The number of samples tested in the same nine months was 24,236.
According to data from the Directorate of Health Services (DHS), 189 new TB cases were reported in January this year. Every month since then and until the end of September, the number of new TB cases detected has stayed above the 160 mark.
The programme with the ambitious goal to eliminate TB by 2025 was set by the Union Health Ministry back in 2023.
An initiative under it involves conferring 'TB Mukt' (TB free) status on village panchayats which conform to a criteria of logging zero to one cases with at least 30 samples per 1,000 population tested in a year.
Last week, the State's health ministry celebrated the milestone of two of its 191 villages -- Usgao and Shiroda -- gaining the 'TB Mukt' status having met the criteria for last year (2023). At an event in Panaji, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane presented the 'TB Mukt' certificate to the two sarpanchas of Usgao, which incidentally is part of his Valpoi constituency, and Shiroda village.
Meanwhile, Dr Manish Gaunekar, chief medical officer at the DHS who heads the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP) in the State said the numbers seem high but there is no alarming rise.
"The number of cases in Goa have remained more or less static at around 2,000 per year," Dr Gaunekar said, adding that cases had drastically dropped in the Covid-19 pandemic years because testing had dropped.
According to the 'India TB Report 2024', Goa has had a lower number of cases than the national average, having logged 133 cases per one-lakh population in 2023 as against 179 per one-lakh population in the rest of the country in 2023.
However, the State's mortality rate among TB patients is relatively higher than the national average in the two successive years of 2022 and 2023.
The mortality was 8.3% in 2022 and it climbed to 9.6% in 2023 while the all-India average is 3.9%.
Alcoholism and type-II diabetes among TB patients have been identified as the two most contributing factors for Goa's higher mortality rate. Of the 200 deaths in 2023, over 30 per-cent were attributed to complications linked to diabetes. Another 18% were due to kidney or liver failures linked to alcoholism.
Goa's TB elimination programme lays thrust on supporting patients with treatment and also monetary support to supplement diet.
"Each patient is given free treatment and also a direct financial benefit of Rs 500 per month to support their diet," Dr Gaunekar said.
Additionally, to tackle the high mortality rate, the DHS encourages patients with an alcohol problem to admit themselves at the dedicated TB hospital housed in a Portuguese-era edifice located at Margao's Monte where in addition to the TB treatment they are also given de-addiction treatment and support when they start to experience withdrawal symptoms.
