Dimapur, January 21: Calling upon the urgent need for TB prevention among the PLHIV community and to end TB related deaths, the ARK Foundation along with Dimapur Network of Positive People, organised a Treatment Literacy Workshop on TB Preventive Therapy (TPT) which was held at the conference hall of the CMO, Dimapur on January 20.
Dr Susan from ITECH, and Ketho Angami, President,ARK Foundation spoke on Tuberculosis, and it’s impact on the PLHIV community while also providing Covid19 vaccination literacy to the participants and to make informed decision. These topics were delivered by Dr Susan, while Ketho Angami spoke on the concept and importance of TPT underlining that “LTBI treatment works as prevention of active TB”.
However, he lamented that the only present available option of TPT in the country is isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT), which has failed to deliver as planned. Given this situation, he appraised the participants about the availability of a new therapy in the form of 3HP, which stands for once weekly dosing with a drug combination of Isoniazid (H) and Rifapentine (P). This therapy is far better than the present IPT as it is a shorter course therapy, more efficacious with a better cure rate. As such, the demand for this has been an advocacy agenda for ARK Foundation since the past months.
He urged the participants to disseminate the information to other affected communities so as to create more noise towards demanding 3HP in India.
As a way forward, the program concluded with the participants planning to conduct a signature campaign drive which will be used as a tool to further advocate with the central TB division and NACO for a national roll out, without further delay.
(Page News Service)
