By Tenzin Monlam
DHARAMSHALA, April 3: To counter the widespread disease of Tuberculosis (TB) in the exile community from a grass root level and ensuring the safety of the future generations, the Tibetan Delek Hospital, in association with Johns Hopkins University, launched a new project titled, ‘Zero TB in Tibetan Kids: Training to End TB Now’ today at Delek Hospital here.
Aimed at eliminating TB in the Tibetan school children, Dawa Phunkyi, Chief Administrator of Delek hospital said that though the hospital has been involved with TB patients since 1980s, the new project is special since it deals with school children.
“A child will have to go under lengthy medication if he contracts TB in school and since a child’s education is important we must ensure that proper health education must be given to kids in school,” said Dawa Phunkyi, who is also a member of the Tibetan parliament.
Acknowledging the efforts put forth by the staff of the Delek Hospital, the Education Minister (Kalon) Ngodup Tsering who attended the event as the chief guest, urged everyone to continue doing the good work of attending the sick with empathy and care.
“The inclusion of ‘now’ in the title of this new project shows the hospital’s intention to increase the effort in fighting the menace of TB in our community. So I would on behalf of the Kashag thank you for the efforts,” said Kalon Ngodup Tsering.
Dr. Kunchok Dorjee, coordinator of the Zero TB program, through his presentation, highlighted an alarming information regarding the higher average of TB patient in the exile Tibetan community than that of India.
Dr. Kunchok, who had earlier worked as Director of the TB control program at the hospital, said, “The reason for us to focus on children is because almost 90 percent of young TB patients are not relapsed one but have contracted the bacteria from someone else recently. If we prescribe proper medication, we can subdue the bacteria before spreading.”
The active case finding under the program will kickstart from tomorrow in lower TCV school followed by the other TCV schools around Dharamshala before moving to Tibetan schools in other states.
“If we find out students with the bacteria, we can take all the precautionary steps to prevent it from spreading. We are also contemplating on various means like instructional videos done by the students to spread awareness in the Tibetan schools,” Dr. Kunchok said adding that it would be a great victory if every school becomes TB-free.
According to UN resolution 2035, the organization aims at ending the global tuberculosis epidemic from the world. However, Dr. Kunchok feels that the count of TB patients in the community can be drastically brought down in five years.
