Sr. DR-TB TB-HIV Supervisor

Figure: Components of Ayushman Bharat Yojana

In the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) 68th round 2011-2012, India was reported to have the highest out-of-pocket expense on healthcare, of which over 67% was spent on drugs. Recognising the importance of essential drugs being available and accessible to the general public, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India, implemented the Free Drugs Service Initiative (FDSI) under the National Health Mission (NHM) in 2015.

Objectives

Eliminating the catastrophic expenditure on TB patients and their families has been an important goal of the World Health Organisation's (WHO’s) END TB strategy.

Substance use has been one of the major reasons for non-adherence to TB treatment and therefore, the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) has implemented several initiatives for control and de-addiction of substance use in association with various other health programmes like the National Tobacco Control Programme (NTCP), Drug De-Addiction Programme (DDAP), etc.

NTEP has also included referral services to de-addiction facilities for TB patients as a part of the ‘Standards for TB Care in India (STCI)'.

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) refers to the set of activities used to assess the progress of a programme towards specific objectives and address weaknesses in the programme design.

Monitoring

It is a systematic, ongoing collection, collation, analysis and interpretation of the data to detect deviations from the expected norms, followed by dissemination of feedback information for corrective actions.

Significance of Monitoring

The Adherence Summary dashboard  is designed primarily for treatment supporters and field staff to help them monitor the day to day adherence statistics of their patients and incorporate necessary actions wherever required. This dashboard enables staff at district level hierarchies and below to view real-time adherence information of all patients on treatment.

The adherence summary dashboard is available in both Ni-kshay web portal as well as the mobile application.

Whenever a patient calls a toll-free line on the 99DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course) envelope, they should have the following experience:

• The call is answered immediately.
• A brief "thank you" message is played.
• The call hangs up automatically.

In total, the call is less than two seconds long. After this sequence, the Nikshay adherence dashboard will be updated with the adherence details.