Fight against TB receives a major setback in covidpandemic- Experts

Bhubaneswar: The fight against Tuberculosis (TB) and drug-resistant Tuberculosis
(DR-TB) has received a major setback as all attention is now focused on battling the covid
pandemic, experts said.
India, incidentally, has the largest burden of TB and DR-TB in the world while Bhubaneswar city
alone registers around 6000 new TB cases every year.
Unless there was community participation to generate awareness about the disease it would not
be easy to tackle the problem,the experts said during a mass awareness programme on
Tuberculosis launched by Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital on Wednesday.
The hospital’s department of Community Medicine provided technical support and guidance in developing the street plays while Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3), a national level NGO,
supported the initiative.
The street plays would be enacted by SANJOG, a Bhubaneswar-based street theatre group
working for social change through theatre and folk media, in about 100 slums of Bhubaneswar
adapting to the Covid-19 appropriate requirements.
The first street play enacted in the hospital campus was inaugurated by the SOA Pro-Vice
Chancellor and Dean of IMS and SUM Hospital, Prof. Gangadhar Sahoo.
Prof. Sumitra Pattnaik of the Community Medicine department provided leadership in preparation
of the street play.
The programme is intended to promote awareness on ‘basics of TB, its diagnosis, treatment, care and prevention in Bhubaneswar city with special focus on the slum areas,” Prof. E. Venkata Raosaid.
Bibhuti Pradhan, Programme Officer of C3, said it was decided to adopt the street play mode because of its distinctive form of communication with a crowd-pulling ability to reach out tolarge populations.

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