The TB hospital in Sewri is Asia’s largest and receives patients from across the country. Representation Pic
Uttar Pradesh native Ramesh Yadav (32), who has been working in Mumbai as a daily-wage labourer for last seven months, was diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) five months ago. He was admitted to the Sewri TB hospital, but after three months of treatment, he left. Ever since, the hospital has been trying to track him down to bring him back and get him to complete the treatment before he develops drug resistance.
Yadav’s is not an isolated case. There are thousands of TB patients who leave the treatment mid-way and become untraceable. And, then, it becomes a Herculean task for officials to track them down, as they often keep their identities secret owing to the social stigma still attached to the disease. To address the issue, the Centre has come up with a plan to track down these patients via the Aadhaar card. Mumbai is set to become the first city to implement this in India.
The missing link
“We had a meeting with senior officials at the union health ministry last week, where we discussed this scheme. Until now, we have been taking voter ID card or driving licence as patients’ ID proof. Now, we will start linking all TB patients with their Aadhaar cards,” said a senior official from the directorate of health department.
If sources are to be believed, the pilot project will start in Parel, Bandra (East) and Kurla from the first week of April. Confirming the news, head of the civic body’s TB department Dr Daksha Shah said, “We have provided tablets to all field workers and medicos in a bid to centralise the system. So, if a patient comes with TB symptoms, all details will be registered online through an application. Test reports of his sputum will also get synced to it, so any treating doctor will have access to the report online. In this system, the Aadhaar card will be kept as the main ID proof. It will help us track patients while undergoing treatment.”
“We have already started asking patients to provide their Aadhaar cards to avail treatment in BMC-run centres,” added Dr Shah.
Experts happy, but…
TB experts welcomed the move saying it would help track down those who often leave their treatment mid-way and develop drug resistance, but they voiced the concern that making it compulsory might affect patients who don’t have Aadhaar cards.
“Linking it to Aadhaar is a good way to track patients with their unique identity numbers. It will help in tracking down inter-state patients with a single number. If a TB patient comes from another state, the medical officer from where s/he has come needs to inform the same to his counterpart in the state s/he has gone to. All of this will become more streamlined. But making it mandatory might also not be the best course of action as most patients come from poor economic background and don’t have Aadhaar card. So, the government needs to keep this in mind,” said Dr Prahlaad Prabhu Desai, a well-known TB specialist.
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