India remains committed to eliminating tuberculosis by 2025 through the Central TB Division’s ‘National Strategic Plan for Tuberculosis Elimination’. To achieve this milestone, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoH&FW), Govt of India has recognized the need for an ‘inter-sectoral, multi-centric program approach’ that aims to empower community response at the grassroots level. Dr S.K. Sachdeva, Deputy Director General & Head of Central TB Division, mentioned in his statement regarding TB elimination that ‘the coming years are critical and would require a holistic approach and intensive efforts at expanding access while improving quality of services to realize the ambitious aspiration of ending TB by 2025 in the country’.

In view of this bold ambition, it becomes critical to monitor direction in which the national strategic plan is moving forward and track some of the key benchmarks that define the program’s overall performance. Globally, India continues to remain the highest TB burden nation (accounting for nearly 26% of the total TB burden and 27% of the DR-TB patient load).

In such a scenario, there is an urgent need to evaluate what are the key gaps and opportunities in existing public healthcare delivery systems. Through this event, we aim to bring the relevant key stakeholders on a common platform to brainstorm over current program operations, evaluate the achievements made till now and the challenges that need to be addressed to successfully eliminate this major public health burden. We aim to do so by sharing MSF and non-MSF operational research experience in Asia with specific attention to learnings from Indian projects. The intent is to have panel discussions and offer a networking space for all key stakeholders who have been working in the area of TB in India. As part of these objectives, we organized the event in 2021 for the first time in partnership with the National Institute of Tuberculosis & Respiratory Disease (NITRD).

Through this engagement approach, we aimed to discuss and agree on concrete joint actions needed to generate political commitment, community engagement, resource mobilization and country-level action to contribute to the achievement of the ultimate outcome. Some of the reputed organizations that joined use last year included Central TB Division (CTD), NITRD, WHO, TB Union, PATH and patient support groups such as ‘Survivors Against TB’.

Paediatric TB has been rising as a major contributor to TB-related morbidity and mortality globally, accounting for nearly 12% of the total patient load. Of these, a staggering 31% of the total caseload is contributed by India alone. Some of the key areas that need to be addressed include the lack of clear patient data around paediatric age group (especially MDR-TB data), intersectoral coordination among different key stakeholders and patient compliance/ journey mapping. Mortality in paediatric TB has a strong correlation with socioeconomic status, underlying nutritional status and immunosuppression. In addition, the varying spectrum of disease patterns and the associated problems (in diagnosis, management and treatment adherence) are major concerns in our country.

For this year, we aim to carry the conversation forward by focusing on certain key priorities that can play a significant role in reducing morbidity and mortality burden around paediatric TB in the Indian TB ecosystem such as the role of innovation, improved patient tracking, and developing patient centred strategies among others. The target audience for our event includes senior policymakers, physicians, innovators and patient support groups that are working in the paediatric TB space.