Meerut: As part of the nationwide drive to stamp out tuberculosis (TB), as many as 156 teams of doctors and health officers will go door-to-door to collect cough samples of people in Meerut. During this two-week long drive starting Saturday, the teams will screen 4.26 lakh people in the district alone.The campaign is part of a nationwide effort to eradicate the disease that has re-emerged as a potent killer, claiming more than 4.06 lakh lives in the country every year.To eradicate the disease by 2025, the Central government has instructed all the states to start “active case finding” of the disease. This means that instead of the old method of identifying TB patients, in which patients used to approach the health authorities, now the workers will go door-to-door to identify such patients. The pilot project was started from the urban slums last year. In the first phase, 80 confirmed cases of TB were detected, while in the second phase 96 people were found to be infected by the disease.“As many as 156 teams have been formed to conduct a survey in 80,190 homes with as many as 4.26 lakh people. While the first and second phase case findings were done in six and 25 districts respectively, in the third phase all the 75 districts will be conducting the door-to-door drive,” said Dr. MS Fauzdar, district tuberculosis officer.Taking a cue from the successful anti-polio drive, the health workers, as part of “active case finding”, will visit each home in four blocks of Meerut, including Sardhana, Machhra, Daurala and Kharkhoda.“As many as 88 villages will be covered in the active-case finding that will be conducted from door to door. There will be 33 supervisors and 11 nodal officers which will be heading the teams. Efforts are on to cover at least 90% of our total target, considering there are chances of finding closed homes where nobody lives or homes where families have relocated elsewhere,” said Dr. Fauzdar.The central government has instructed all the states to start an active case finding campaign for tuberculosis so that no patient of TB remains without treatment. A majority of the patients who die due to TB are the ones who don’t approach the doctors or are unaware about it. Until December 2017, the number of TB patients in Meerut district was 6,898, which was 200 cases up from 6,698 cases 2016.

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