: A two-day workshop begins at the Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) on Thursday to discuss ways to bring uniformity in the implementation of the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), driven by the Central government.
The workshop is being hosted by PIMS, against the backdrop of TB emerging as one of the major threats to public health, and India accounting for more than one-fourth of tuberculosis cases in the world.
Despite reasonable progress having been made in socio-economic and technological development, the prevalence of tuberculosis is on the rise. Over 20 per cent of TB cases is diagnosed and treated in medical colleges. Various strategies are being followed by the faculty to deal with such cases, especially those that involve patients suffering from extra pulmonary TB and drug-resistant TB.
The government has initiated a Task Force mechanism to train faculty from each medical college. Each college is required to set up core committees to update the RNTCP guidelines on TB management and share their feedback. Their feedback is compiled and discussed in each State-specific meeting under the State Task Force (STF).
The event is being organised in collaboration with the State Tuberculosis Office Puducherry, the State Task Force Puducherry and the Central TB division, Government of India.
Over 130 medical college faculty involved in tuberculosis control and management, experts from the Central Tuberculosis Division - RNTCP, national institutes such as the National Tuberculosis Institute (Bangalore) and the National Institute of Tuberculosis & Respiratory Diseases (New Delhi), the World Health Organisation’s country office in India, the International Union Against Tuberculosis & Lung Diseases (IUALTD) and officials from all the regional Zonal Task Forces are expected to attend this meeting.
During the workshop, all the recommendations of the medical college core committee meetings would be deliberated upon to bring uniformity in the implementation of the RNTCP in their colleges.
The themes of the plenary sessions include RNTCP - An overview and updates, TB guidelines for management of Extra Pulmonary TB, Revised Technical and Operational Guidelines - salient features, implementation of revised diagnostic algorithm in medical colleges, implementation of daily regimen for TB treatment, implementation of newer drugs and regimen for treatment of DR-TB patients, reaching TB patients in private sector and TB surveillance.
