Keonjhar: India has the world’s highest Tuberculosis (TB) burden, with an estimated 26 Iakh people contracting the disease and approximately 4 lakh people dying from the disease every year. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) is implementing an ambitious National Strategic Plan with the goal to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) End TB targets by 2025.
In Odisha, approximately 53,612 numbers of TB Patients are identified and are under treatment. As per the report, Keonjhar is among the top four districts with a large number of TB Patients. In Keonjhar District more than 2,000 TB patients are identified whereas 1,354 numbers of TB patients are on treatment.
District Mineral Foundation (DMF), and District Administration Keonjhar endeavors to adopt a just, humane, and sensitive approach to ensure that vulnerable TB patients are provided with nutritional support which shall help provide the much-needed dietary requirement fostering recovery.
In a historic initiative for TB Patients, on 13th January 2023 the Chief District Medical & Public Health Officer (CDM&PHO) has signed MOU with District Level Federation (DLF) of Women Self Help Groups (SHGs), Mission Shakti for ensuring the supply of doorstep nutritional support via food baskets for more than 2000+ TB patients in the Keonjhar.
On Tuesday, CDM&PHO has launched the distribution of nutritional support via the food baskets from Sub-centre Naranpur, Keonjhar Block in presence of the Additional District Public Health Officer (ADPHO)-TB, DPC Mission Shakti, District Programme Manager (DPM), NHM, Keonjhar, and President District Level Federation (DLF), Mission Shakti along with representatives from DMF Keonjhar.
An amount of Rs 12.30 crore has been sanctioned under DMF for ‘Nutritional Support to the TB patients’ in Keonjhar for a period of 3 years.
The DLF, Mission Shakti has been assigned for the procurement of food baskets, ensuring the quality of food items and delivery to each patient under treatment for a period of 6 months whilst on treatment.