Ni-kshay Mitra Initiative

Context

• Recently, the President has launched the ‘Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan’ and announced the Nikshay 2.0 portal to eliminate TB by 2025.

About Ni-kshay Mitras initiative

• The initiative ensures three-pronged support includes: Nutritional, Additional diagnostic, and Vocational support. 
• The programme was brought in to fill the critical “community’’ elements into India’s fight towards the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan aimed at eliminating TB by 2025.
• The NIKSHA 2.0 portal provides additional patient support to TB patients to take advantage of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) opportunities to improve treatment outcomes, enhance community participation and fulfill India’s commitment to TB eradication. 
• Ni-kshay Mitra (Donor) for this programme includes co-operative societies, corporates, elected representatives, individuals, institutions, non-governmental organisations, political parties and partners who can support by adopting the health facilities (for individual donor), blocks/urban wards/districts/States for accelerating the response against TB to complement the government efforts.
• The support provided to the patient under this initiative is in addition to the free diagnostics, free drugs and Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana provided by the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) to all the TB patients notified from both the public and the private sector.

Tb Prevalence in India

• India has the world’s highest tuberculosis (TB) burden, with an estimated 26 lakh people contracting the disease and approximately 4 lakh people dying from it every year. 
• The economic burden of TB in terms of the loss of lives, income and workdays is also substantial. 
• TB usually affects the most economically productive age group of society resulting in a significant loss of working days thereby pushing the TB patients further into the vortex of poverty.

Source: TH