That is why Dr Sreenivas Achuthan Nair calls for well-integrated and coordinated multi-sectoral health and development responses which would not only help us do better in finding, treating and preventing TB but also improve programme outcomes towards achieving zero hunger, zero poverty, prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, ending tobacco and alcohol, ending AIDS, among other goals and targets enshrined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (as well as in several domestic and regional plans, declarations and agreements). Dr Nair came to India's national capital Delhi to speak in India Innovation Summit organised by the Government of India's National TB Elimination Programme and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
Dr Sreenivas Achuthan Nair, Senior Advisor of Stop TB Partnership (hosted by United Nations OPS), has contributed to strengthening TB responses over the past two and a half decades. He has earlier served as the government TB Programme Officer of Kerala state in India, as well as worked with the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), and also with WHO India supporting India's national TB programme.
Commit, invest and deliver
World TB Day is observed globally on 24th March to amplify the urgency of ending TB - which is the world's deadliest infectious disease. This year's theme, "Yes! We Can End TB: Commit, Invest, Deliver" is a bold call for hope, urgency and accountability.
Dr Nair visited few sites where female TB Affected Street Activists (TASAs) work with female homeless and migrant women (and other genders). TASA themselves are TB survivors or affected by TB. This model is developed by Humana People to People India, and funded by Stop TB Partnership's Challenge Facility For Civil Society Grant (through which, 143 local groups get support to do similar community-led work to reach the unreached people with TB and supporting them).
There are twenty TASA frontline leaders in Delhi serving female homeless people and migrant workers. Each TASA works with 5 or more 'Sahelis' (a Hindi language word for female friends). So a network of 100 or more Sahelis and TASAs have united to stop TB among female homeless and migrant workers.
The female migrant worker mentioned in the opening of this article is also one of the Sahelis, helping others get diagnosed with TB early on and promptly treated, supported and get cured.
Dr Nair went with TASA workers Chanda and Geeta, their coordinator Ravindra and other 'Sahelis' to a government-run shelter home which is hardly a kilometre away from a prominent government-run Jhandewala TB clinic in the heart of India's capital Delhi. But challenges which homeless and migrant people face in accessing services make the journey of a kilometre almost impossible for many, without the help and support of frontline workers.
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