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Stop TB-Fight poverty : An Indian Perspective
Why tackle Tuberculosis ?
Potential economic benefits for India
Effective TB control can help break the cycle of poverty and disease. It cures people and returns them to active, productive life, which in turn benefits their children and contributes to the economic and social development of their country. As more people are cured, the cycle of transmission is broken and fewer people are infected. Ultimately this leads to fewer cases of active TB.
TB control is rated by the World Bank as one of the most cost-effective health intervention because of its potential to avert a large percentage of the global disease, its low cost for each year of healthy life saved, the low cost per capita, and the potential impact on socially excluded and poor people.
Ravindra Dholakia, Professor of Economics from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in an article, Potential Benefits of DOTS Strategy against TB in India, divides these into two broad categories:
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Pure social welfare increasing effects of DOTS, which do not generate direct tangible economic benefits. These include reduced suffering of TB patients, quicker and surer cure from the disease, lives saved and disability reduced for dependents and non-workers suffering from TB, poverty alleviation
etc.
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Direct tangible economic benefits of DOTS which include: reduction in prevalence of TB due to DOTS which improves the efficiency and productivity of workers, TB deaths averted among current and future workers and release of hospital beds currently occupied by TB patients.
He postulates that that even if the Indian government spends about US $0.74 billion per year to ensure the success of DOTS strategy the investment would fetch a return of 16% p.a. in real terms.
Projected incremental costs to the government for successful DOTS implementation throughout India are of the order of US $ 200 million per year, compared to the tangible economic benefits of at least US $ 750
million per year, the article notes.
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