Deputy Commissioner and CEO, LAHDC, Kargil Santosh Sukhadeve chaired a meeting to identify the donors for community support for Tuberculosis patients under the National Tuberculosis Elimination Program (NTEP) on June 21.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has initiated the program for community support for TB Patients aimed to end TB by 2025, five years before the global target of 2030.

It was informed in the meeting that, currently, 77 patients are under treatment in the district while the target is to address 170 patients per year.

DC, Kargil, appealed to the stakeholders to cooperate with the Health Department and adopt the patients and distribute them to different agencies. He said it is the social and humanitarian responsibility of all the stakeholders to look after the patients and downtrodden sections of society.

The program is aimed to provide additional support and improve the treatment of TB patients, augment community involvement and leverage Corporate Social Responsibility opportunities. The program will include nutritional support, vocational support, diagnosis, and additional nutritional support.

With this program, it is expected to increase the involvement of people and communities in TB elimination, increase awareness about TB symptoms, reduction in TB-related stigma, better nutritional support to TB patients and reach to the marginalized section of the society.

The key stakeholders to be involved in this program are cooperatives, corporate, elected representatives, individual donors, civil society institutions, NGOs, and political parties.