TB Preventive Therapy helps over 13,000 people in Karnataka

Over 13,000 people in Karnataka have benefited from the new preventive TB therapy that was started last year for the contacts of TB patients.

The TB Preventive Therapy (TPT) for children aged under five was launched seven years ago, but since last August, those aged above five are also being treated.

The state health department’s initiative is based on directions given by the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) in 2021. The goal is to tackle latent TB infections, where a person is infected with TB bacteria but does not have active disease. Latent infections can progress to active TB in a section of the carriers.

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“Studies show that 40-70 per cent of the Indian population has latent TB. Treating latent infections is expected to reduce new TB incidence by 11 per cent in the country,” says Dr Anil S, state TB Officer.

The new programme is only for TB patients’ household contacts aged above five, and not for the general population.

According to the India TB Report 2023, Karnataka identified 1.3 lakh such contacts across the state last year. However, only two per cent of them were given the blood test to determine TB infection, and half of them (1,509) were found to be infected.

The number of people tested was low because the tracing and testing mechanism for contacts above five years has been set up in only 14 districts so far, the officials stated.