Bhubaneswar: With the Niti Aayog - World Bank Health Index 2.0 sounding an alarm bell for the State on killer TB disease, the death toll due to TB in Odisha in 2017 (Niti Index's reference year) had posted a near 14 per cent rise. Now, TB is taking an average 7 lives every 24 hours in Odisha, and has emerged as the number one killer disease in the State among all communicable diseases.
The second Niti health index has put Odisha in the bottom three in the country. And the poor treatment success rate of the disease in 2017 has harmed the State in the overall ranking in a bigger way as the treatment success rate nosedived to 72 per cent in 2017 from 89 per cent in 2016. Odisha’s rate had been below the national average rate of 79 per cent in 2017.
However, as per the latest data available with the State TB Cell, the year 2018 had brought some sigh of relief for the State.
Not only the new TB cases notified had shown a drop of over 29 per cent to 50, 314 in 2018, but the number of patients cured had also shown a rise of around 29 per cent to touch 20, 961. The number of patients cured of TB in 2017 was 16,278. The total cured in 2016 was 20,069.
However, the State TB Cell couldn't provide the death toll due to TB in 2018, as the data is still under processing.
A glance of the other details available shed more light on the TB enormity over the years in the State. It shows of the total notified cases, a high of 88 per cent were new TB patients and around 12 per cent recurrent TB cases (means patients that were earlier treated and cured).
Around 2 percent TB cases have HIV infection. While pulmonary TB cases (means TB affecting lungs) account for a lion’s share of 80 per cent in Odisha, extra-pulmonary TB (TB affecting organs/tissues other than lungs) cases constitute 20 per cent.
District-wise data reveals that Deogarh and Nabarangpur have 94 per cent pulmonary TB cases; whereas Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Jagatsinghpur have more than one-third of total new TB cases as extra-pulmonary TB.
Paediatric TB cases were around 5 per cent of total notified cases. Capital city Bhubaneswar topped with 12 per cent paediatric TB cases in the State.
The significant alert is death rate is high in recurrent TB cases in Odisha. Data reveals when 4 per cent of the total new microbiologically confirmed cases resulted in death; the proportion was 8 per cent in recurrent TB cases.
Similarly, when 4 per cent of new cases diagnosed clinically turned fatal, it was 6 per cent in recurrent TB cases.
As the Narendra Modi Government has fixed the goal of 2025 for banishing TB from the country, Odisha has to work doubly hard as TB incidence in Odisha is higher than the national average, and the State figured among top-ten TB incidence States in country.