All officers of the cabinet secretariat, including the cabinet secretary, have adopted Tuberculosis (TB) patients in various parts of the country under the Ni-kshayMitra initiative launched by the Centre recently.
One out of every four TB patients in the world is in India. In absolute numbers, it stands at 26. 9 lakh Indians, as per latest data. A huge majority of those TB patients are poor. TB treatment is free, funded by the government, which also provides some for maintaining a proper diet. But this is a disease that hits the poor really hard because treatment calls for periods of rest and regular intake of nutritious food over a period of months, and both are often out of reach for those who live on modest daily incomes.
According to updates shared by thehealth ministryon nikshay. in, a portal that maintains real-time information on the status of the adoption scheme, of the 13. 5 lakh TB patients who are on treatment currently, 10. 6 lakh (nearly 75%) had consented for adoption under the Centres scheme.