Covid-19 is griping the world hard as almost every other country in the planet earth has got the virus. Diseases are curse to mankind and Tuberculosis is also one of them. Tuberculosis have taken a number of lives every year and Assam is being among the top of it.
Tuberculosis or TB is a serious infectious bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs. The bacteria that cause TB are spread when a infected person coughs of sneeze. People might have seen various ad campaigns of TB and the mortality rate of it is around 2% every year which is indeed huge numbers as around 1 millions cases emerge in india every year and around 200,000 people die because of Tuberculosis or TB. The common symptoms of TB are pain in chest , difficulty while breathing , fatigue , fever , weight loss etc. But the most spinning think is that most patients doesn’t show any symptoms which make the disease more fatal. A infected Tuberculosis patient is very contagious , if not treated early then he/she could infect more people unknowingly in the worst case scenario.
Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme known as RNTCP is a board who overviews the Tuberculosis cases. First RNTCP was implemented in Dibrugarh district of Assam during the year 1998-99. The RNTCP programme now covers all the 27 district of Assam. Currently, there are 150 numbers of Tuberculosis Unit (TU) and 350 numbers of Designated Microscopy Centres (DMC) to control Tuberculosis in Assam. More than 7,000 Directly Observed Treatment ( DOT) are now running in the state to provide proper treatment to TB patients. The Assam & Central government in the recent years have taken all necessary measures to decrease the disease human to infect ratio. The basic objective of RNTCP programme is to ensure Direct Obeserved treatment to every patient ongoing with Tuberculosis. Under the RNTCP banner all 27 districts has District TB officers ( DTO) and along with 64 numbers of Medical Officers according to report of 2016. However we tried to sneak in into more latest reports of recent years but only report upto 2016 were available in the official website of Ministry of Health & Family Welfares.
According to the RNTCP report of 2016 in total Assam has recorded around 37,140 people were infected by Tuberculosis where Sontipur district lead the chart with 2, 935 . Nagoan , Dibrugarh , Dhemaji also copes up the chart 2,000+ cases of Tuberculosis. The RNTCP also has it’s own drug store at state level which is managed by a pharmacist and a drug store in-charge. Tuberculosis can only be treated by Antibiotics and patients with active symptoms will require a long course of treatment involving multiple antibiotics. Some of the most common medications use to treat Tuberculosis are Isoniazid , Rifampin , Ethambutol and Pyrazinamide. If a infected person takes regular TB drugs than the disease can be purely cured and the patient will be fit and fine again. Eventually when new infection or diseases occur it is hard to contain it in first sight but further our scientist and doctors comes up with proper cure of all the deadly diseases.
