‘Missing’ patients: Govt mulls law to make TB reporting mandatory

Health officials, minister call for multi-sectoral approach to tackling disease

ISLAMABAD: With thousands of tuberculosis patients falling through the cracks of the system, the government is working on a bill which would bind health practitioners in the capital, even those in the private sector, to notify the government about the patients they are treating.

This was disclosed by Dr Hussain Hadi, an adviser to the National Tuberculosis Programme.

Pakistan is ranked fifth among high-burden countries around the world for tuberculosis (TB) with around 500,000 patients contracting the disease every year, officials said while quoting the World Health Organisation. They added that around 150,000 of these patients go ‘missing’ from the national registration system and spread the disease.

Dr Hadi said that to combat this, they were working on a mandatory TB notification bill which would help find these missing patients and see if they are getting the treatment prescribed in the programme’s guidelines.

Such laws, he said, have already been passed by three provincial assemblies including Punjab, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The adviser said that the bill is currently being deliberated on by the cabinet. Once approved, it would be implemented in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B).

“Patients being treated in government health facilities are already registered with the programme and we keep a check on whether they were treated according to programme’s guidelines and whether the treatment was successful or not,” he said, adding that the biggest cracks for the patients to fall through were those who are not registered with the programme and are treated by private doctors.

“We have no information about their treatment or cure,” he said.

The legislation, Dr Hadi hoped, would help find the missing patients and, by doing so, reduce the spread of the disease.

“Missing TB cases was the biggest threat and there is a need for inter-sectoral collaboration to find these cases,” said Tuberculosis Control Programme National Manager Dr Nasir Mahmood Khan, while speaking at an event held to mark World TB Day.

“We cannot defeat the menace of this disease without the collaboration of all the sectors of the society i.e. housing, food, environment, social welfare etc,” he said.

Federal Health Minister Saira Afzal Tarar also stressed that the current situation warrants urgent action by gearing up efforts to find missing TB cases.

“We are advocating strongly for enhancing domestic investment in TB,” the health minister said, adding, “I have taken up the matter with the prime minister and the provincial leadership.”

She called for expanding public-private partnerships and adopting a multi-sectoral approach involving education, agriculture, housing, social welfare, and others to address the high incidence of the disease.

The health minister vowed to mobilise all resources to fight TB, adding that Pakistan was committed to ending TB by 2030 in line with its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

She further said that free TB diagnostic and treatment services are available at more than 1,700 public and private sector facilities across Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 27^th, 2018.