Kochi: Ernakulam is soon going to be the first district in the country where health authorities have joined hands with 100 private hospitals to provide free tuberculosis (TB) medicines and carry out sputum tests to check for TB drug resistance.

TB patients undergoing treatment in these hospitals would be provided Rs 500 per month under the Nikshay Poshan Yojana during the treatment period. Elsewhere in the country, this money is provided only to patients undergoing treatment in government hospitals.

Ernakulam district TB officer, Dr Sharath Rao, said that the initial phase will cover 100 hospitals. The aim is to connect with all the private hospitals and clinics in the district. The second phase would connect with the ayurveda and homeopathy hospitals. The purpose is to make sure that no patient is denied free TB treatment in the district.

Recent studies suggest that nearly 30% of the TB cases in private sector across the state do not receive complete treatment. Currently, there are 24,500 confirmed pulmonary TB cases in the state and 8,000 of these seek treatment in private hospitals and have to bear the expenses.

The drug treatment is for six to nine months and costs around Rs 3,000. The nucleic acid amplification tests to ascertain TB drug resistance cost around Rs 6,000. Under this liaison, the test samples would be collected from private hospitals and would be sent to the labs at Ernakulam General Hospital or Kalamassery Medical College for tests.

The World Health Organization (WHO) consultant on TB, Dr Rakesh P S, stated that with this setting, a rapid reduction in the number of TB cases is expected across the state. The cases are expected to reduce from 70 per one lakh population to five or six per lakh population.

Dr Shibu Balakrishnan, medical consultant of WHO-revised national tuberculosis control programme technical assistance project, said that this is expected to reduce the death rate due to TB. It will also limit the expenditure due to TB in terms of loss of wages or out-of-pocket expenditure on medicines and tests. (TNN)