'Early detection can help eradicate disease' WHO

Ahead of the World Tuberculosis Day, which is on March 24, 2016, Poonam Khetrapal Singh, South-East Asia Regional director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) emphasized on the need to reach out to communities for Tuberculosis detection.

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"To end TB, there is a need to reach out to and engage with communities directly for case detection, treatment completion and addressing out-of-pocket expenditures.

"Forging partnerships with civil society groups and between public and private care providers will likewise ensure that present gaps are closed and that a society-wide movement to end TB develops," Singh said.

Further stating that Tuberculosis is the disease of the poor and the marginalised.

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"Addressing poverty and other determinants will have a dramatic effect on the disease's burden. Policies in this regard could include increasing access to safe housing and providing viable social security among other options.

"TB isn't only a health problem. Therefore, its solutions must also encompass the full range of multi-sectoral dimensions and multi-stakeholder engagement. It is one of those diseases that require health in all policies, coupled with strengthening the full spectrum of human rights that guarantee a TB patient the right to the best treatment possible," she said.

Singh urged the government to be committed in fighting Tuberculosis.

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"Also, political commitment at the highest level must be reinforced. The mission-like zeal with which polio and HIV/AIDS have been fought must be reproduced in the battle against TB and must lead to organisational and programming shifts," she said.