Awareness meeting on implementation of National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme in tea gardens

OUR CORRESPONDENT

TEZPUR: Dr Pradip Kumar Lahkar, Medical Inspector of Plantations, Tezpur, who is also nominated as nodal officer for multi-sectoral convergence for NTEP, organized an awareness meeting on implementation of the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP) in tea estates of the Sonitpur district on Thursday at the Tezpur Assistant Labour Commissioner's office premises with the Sonitpur District Tuberculosis officials, Secretary ABITA, officials of TAI and senior doctors of tea gardens of the Sonitpur district.

During the course of the meeting, implementation of NTEP in the tea estates was discussed in detail. Dr Lahkar stressed the importance of understanding the need of eliminating TB as it was affecting the tea garden population the most. Dr Lahkar appealed to all the tea garden managers of the Sonitpur district to extend their cooperation to make the programme successful and to achieve the goal of a TB-free India by 2025 as set by the Prime Minister of India. He also mentioned that in undivided Sonitpur, already five TB detection centres in different tea gardens were functioning and as per the District Tuberculosis officials, two more TB detection centres would be opened which would help tea garden authorities to detect and treat TB patients in the gardens.

Officials from the District Tuberculosis Department also ensured that they would provide all logistics support to detect and treat TB patients in the gardens and they assured their support to the District TB Centre, Sonitpur in fulfilling the dream of eliminating TB.

Besides, Dr Lahkar also had a meeting with the officials of Tezpur Cancer Centre which opened its OPD services after it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a virtual ceremony from Dibrugarh on April 28, 2022. Dr Lahkar discussed the facilities available at the centre in detail and he advised all tea garden managers to avail the facilities in the Tezpur Cancer Centre to treat and detect cancer patients in the gardens.

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