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A vulnerable population is a group of people in whom the prevalence or incidence of tuberculosis (TB) is significantly higher than in the general population.

As per India’s Tuberculosis (TB) notification rule, each diagnostic laboratory, including private labs, must report diagnosed TB patient details to the National TB Elimination Program (NTEP) utilizing the digital surveillance system called Nikshay. As of March 2021, 20899 private laboratories are mapped in the Nikshay online portal for notification of diagnosed TB cases.

Private laboratories provide a variety of TB diagnostic services which includes:

Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centers (AB-HWCs) are being provided with anti-TB drugs, consumables and financial support under NTEP.

Uninterrupted supply of drugs and consumables and proper financial support forms the important components of TB elimination program. Under AB-HWC, many Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and Urban-PHCs will have microscopy centers which will need periodic supply of laboratory consumables. Similarly, under National TB Elimination Program (NTEP), TB treatment services are also decentralized, demanding uninterrupted supply of drugs.

The National Tuberculosis (TB) Elimination Program’s Tuberculosis Unit (TU) Drug Store is the functional unit of the TU that deals with the supply chain management of anti-TB drugs.

Each state needs to have one fully operational State Drug Store (SDS) for every 5 crores of population. In larger states/difficult terrain, more than one SDS can be established as per National Tuberculosis (TB) Elimination Program (NTEP) guidelines.

It is responsible for effective management of medicines and other logistics and ensuring uninterrupted supply of good quality 1st & 2nd line anti-TB medicines for adult and paediatric patients.

The Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threat (SWOT) analysis of the National Tuberculosis Elimination Program (NTEP), as documented in the National Strategic Plan (NSP) 2020-25 is presented in the table below.

The Ni-kshay Online Portal under National Tuberculosis (TB) Elimination Program (NTEP) has a provision for generating TB treatment outcome reports which should be downloaded periodically to understand the TB treatment adherence and response to TB treatment provided to the patients.

Following are the steps to download and review the treatment outcome report from Ni-kshay.

Step 1: Open the Nikshay Reports page.

Step 2: Under Notification Reports, click Outcome Reports.

Nikshay portal allows tuberculosis (TB) notification performance of State/District/TB Units/Peripheral Health Institutes on the click of a button.

This helps in periodically monitoring the performance of health units against the targets and helps in monitoring TB notification.

Steps to display and download Nikshay TB Notification Report

Step 1: Open the Nikshay Reports page.

Step 2: Under Notification Reports, click TB Notification.

National Tuberculosis (TB) Elimination Program’s (NTEP) Nikshay portal has a Direct Beneficiary Transfer (DBT) module for Nikshay Poshan Yojana (NPY) Scheme.

Under this scheme, each TB patient is provided with 500 INR per month, which is directly deposited into their bank account. The amount is provided for the entire duration of TB treatment and is provided for nutritional support to TB patients.

Nikshay is an integrated Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) platform adopted by the National Tuberculosis (TB) Elimination Programme (NTEP) for TB patient management and care.

The patient management workflow in Nikshay streamlines a series of activities required for TB patients from identification of presumptive TB cases to recording treatment outcomes. Nikshay uses in-built modules in the platform to perform these tasks. There are also different user logins that allow certain functions (see figure below).