Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the major communicable diseases in developing countries like India, which is proving too hard to be controlled. The disease mainly targets low- income group people who are less healthy and live under unhygienic conditions. Every year T.B. claims nearly 4.17 lakh lives of people, which is serious problem for health sector. India accounts for 1/5th of global incidence of TB and tops the lists of 22 high TB burden countries.

Realizing the seriousness of the issue, Ministry of Health & family Welfare, GOI in support from GFATM (Global Fund against AIDS,TB & Malaria),launched project through Principle Receipt ant World Vision & Sub Receipt ant Lepra India. The sub-sub Receipt ant is Swami Vivekanand Shiksha Samiti implementing partner working in Sehore, Raisen district mainly target the rural population, working in close collaboration with DTO.

The project objective were to increase awareness, reduce stigma and ensure peoples participation in Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) especially in directly observed treatment short course (DOTS) through IEC intervention and social mobilization, to identify, promote early detection, check the dropout and to strengthen the referral services through the capacity building of CBOs, private practioners, Aganwadi workers, local leaders, Health service providers and establish the network to a bridge the gap and enhance collaboration among the health providers and health seekers by building the capacity of the Panchayati Raj Intuitions(PRI’s) Local Health Functionaries, Village Health & Sanitation Committee Members, Youths etc. for patient friendly treatment.

India bears the highest burden of tuberculosis (TB) globally with an annual incidence of 2.8 million new cases. About 2.6 million people live with HIV and 1.2million are TB-HIV co-infected. India has one of the highest multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) burden globally with 70,000 cases annually. India’s highly successful TB programme has consistently achieved global targets at a national level but nevertheless, India continues to struggle with the world’s highest burden of TB.

Under the project, CARE India is responsible for Active Case Finding in villages and urban slums to enhance TB case detection, facilitate and support TB patients to know their HIV status to address TB-HIV coinfection, increasing TB case Notification through Private Practitioners, training Qualified Private Practitioners for TB Notification, facilitating IPT for children under 5 years who are in contact with TB patients and training of Rural Health Care Provider / Urban Health Care Provider / AYUSH for referral of TB symptomatic cases to government health facilities at various levels. CARE India also engages in advocacy with the Health Department and strives to engage with medical colleges and hospitals for adopting the DOTS plus guidelines.

While in its effort to control TB cases, the government’s National Strategic Plan (NSP) for TB elimination paved the way for better diagnosis at government health canters, two major gaps have continued to prevail – notifying TB patients and providing care to MDR-TB patients. Hence, in 2010, World Vision India with the assistance of GFATM (Global Fund for AIDS, TB, Malaria) Round 9 grant initiated Project Axshya (which means ‘TB free’ in Hindi) with aprimary objective to improve TB case notifications in both public and private sector as well as provide counselling and food support to MDR-TB patients across 74 districts in eight states of India. The project continued till December 2018 as a ‘specialized’ TB care and control initiative of an NGO TB-Consortium. Six NGO-partners namely ADRA India, CARE India, GLRA India, LEPRA India, SHIS and TB Alert India worked as Sub-Recipients (SRs) and around 80 grass-root level NGOs as Sub-Sub Recipients (SSRs).