The government has declared Tuberculosis (TB) a notifiable disease in the country and a notification to this effect has been sent to all states on May 2012.
From now on, any institution, hospital, government or private, which detects a new tuberculosis patient, will have to inform the government about the case and the kind of treatment given, the notification said.
The designated authority that would have to be informed on new TB cases is the district health office, Chief Medical Officer of a district and the municipal health officer in a municipality.
The decision is significant, with the number of people with drug-resistant TB increasing every passing day.
According to the statistics available with the National TB Control Programme, the disease kills two persons every three minutes in the country and the daily toll adds up to about 1,000.
Multi-drug resistant TB has become a menace in India. Every year, the country reports 15 lakh new cases of TB.
As per the statistics given by WHO, around 73,000 of the notified new TB cases in 2010 were already multi-drug resistant. Of these, less than 3,000 were detected.
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