Get set for door-to-door TB drive by civic body

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is set to conduct a door-to-door tuberculosis (TB) drive for two weeks this month. Civic teams will visit households in congested and crammed slum areas to detect TB cases.

The door-to-door campaign will start from November 12 and end on November 24. The previous door-to-door campaign was from January 11 to 27, this year. Health officers will visit the slum areas. Newly-detected TB patients will be promptly treated. To complete this task, 297 teams consisting of health workers have been formed.

Groups of health workers will visit over 1.60 lakh households within a fortnight to check around seven lakh citizens, in all age groups, for symptoms of TB.

BMC’s executive health officer Dr Padmaja Keskar, said, “The health workers will be visiting 65 areas of the city, most of these are slum areas. If detected with TB, the patient will be taken to the nearest government or civic-run lab for further tests. Also, we will provide the patients with vouchers, so that they can get their X-rays done from private hospitals. Once diagnosed with TB, the medicines will be provided free of cost.”

Dr Daksha Shah, TB control department head officer, BMC, said, “If a person has been coughing for more than 14 days, or gets a fever during the evening for more than two weeks, or if they have chest pain, spit blood, swelling in the neck then these are tell-tale signs of tuberculosis which are usually neglected but we plan to raise awareness about them.”