The district administration and the Directorate of Tuberculosis will shortly convene a meeting of all private hospitals here over the reporting of tuberculosis (TB) cases.
Very less
Official sources told The Hindu here on Monday that less than 15 of the 400-odd private hospitals in the district were filing monthly reports on ‘Nikshay,’ a web-enabled and case-based monitoring application developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to provide real time surveillance of TB cases.
Around 70 hospitals have registered with it so far in the district.
District Collector Archana Patnaik had taken a strong view over the failure of private hospitals to report the statistics.
Private hospitals
An official at the TB Directorate said that private hospitals reported 50 new cases every month while the actual figure was likely to be around 300, which was the figure reported by government hospitals in the district. Many private institutions were reluctant to report TB cases for fear of losing patients.
The reporting of TB data was vital for the policymakers to formulate the drug requirements in future, as the Union Government was planning to impose a ban on over-the-counter sales of all TB-related drugs.
Vital
Accurate reporting of TB cases was vital to calculate the cases of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR TB), which was a more virulent strain and required higher drug dosage.
Health officials said that small clinics, and general practitioners would be given proper training on creating these records if they registered with Nikshay.
Hospitals registering with Nikshay would be updated with advances in TB treatment.
According to a Government Order dated May 7, 2012 by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, all private doctors, caregivers, and clinics dealing with tuberculosis patients must report such cases to the government.
