PM Inaugurates One World TB Summit-2023 in Varanasi

• 25 Mar 2023

Why in News?

On 24 March 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the One World TB Summit - 2023 at the Rudraksha Convention Center in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

Key Points

• The One World TB Summit - 2023 was attended online by several state governors, several state health secretaries and managing directors of the National Health Mission.
• The event, also attended by representatives from companies, industries, civil society, NGOs and TB champions, who reiterated India's commitment to eliminate the highly infectious disease by 2025, five years ahead of the global target of 2030.
• The Prime Minister released the 'Annual India TB Report 2023', a compilation of the country's efforts towards making India TB free by 2025.
• A training module on Pulmonary Tuberculosis was also launched at the event. This module has been developed to train health workers at the secondary and tertiary levels in the public and private sector in India.
• The Prime Minister also launched the TB-Free Panchayat Initiative to leverage the support of over 2.5 lakh gram panchayats to raise awareness about TB, to eliminate the stigma associated with the disease, and to help monitor and improve services. Preventive therapy has also been introduced as a new treatment to prevent TB infection so that the spread of the disease can be stopped.
• Apart from this, a family-centred care model was also announced to ensure the welfare of families affected by TB.
• Narendra Modi also laid the foundation stone of the National Center for Disease Control and High Control Laboratory in Varanasi and inaugurated the site for the Metropolitan Public Health Surveillance Unit.
• On the occasion, the Prime Minister also felicitated the states and districts for making significant progress on key program indicators to eliminate TB. Karnataka and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir were honored in the States/UTs category and Nilgiris (Tamil Nadu), Pulwama (Jammu and Kashmir) and Anantnag (Jammu and Kashmir) were given district level awards.
• At the event, Narendra Modi pointed out that the ICMR institutes like National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT) have completed the world's largest national TB infection survey, which helped in understanding the TB burden at the state level for targeted programmatic activities.
• India is the only country in the world to implement the Sub-National Certification (SNC) function. It is an innovative scientific method through which districts are verified for their TB eradication progress.
• The Prime Minister also informed that under the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme for TB patients, an amount of more than Rs 2,000 crore has been transferred to the accounts of more than 75 lakh TB patients.
• Significantly, in March 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed to eliminate TB from India by 2025, while the rest of the world aims to achieve the TB-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.