National Tuberculosis Center

Message From Director

 

Message from NTP Director

It is our pleasure to provide information about the Nepal National Tuberculosis Programme through this website.

Tuberculosis is considered to be one of the major public health problems but it is completely curable, if the patient takes the recommended dose of medicines for a stipulated period of time on regular basis.

TB patients who do not take medicines including appropriate cocktail of anti TB drugs for required length of time on regular basis remain not cured and usually develop drug resistant tuberculosis. This situation lead to the development of DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course) strategy, which is the most effective policy for ensuring that TB patients are cured, TB is controlled. This strategy is also one of the most cost effective health interventions available.

However, even with successful DOTS programme in place it inevitable that some patients will have MDR (Multi Drug Resistance) TB. This fact leads to the concept of DOTS PLUS for the treatment of MDR TB patients. Therefore, MDR TB management programme, approved by the Green Light Committee (GLC), is one the first and so far the largest progreamme in South East Asia. GLC has conducts two annual monitoring reviews; the latest mission has declared ' Nepal NTP as a Global Pioneer in implementation of the DOTS PLUS programme fully integrated in the primary health care network.'  As per Green Light Committee (GLC) approval, initially, NTP was given permission to treat 350 MDR TB cases over a two years period.  The Nepal has adopted DOTS PLUS Pilot project in September 2005 in five regions of the country and it includes 5 treatment centers and 16 Sub Centers. With technical and financial support from WHO NTP has expended MDR TB Management programme to facilitate access. Currently 10 treatment Centres and 34 Sub-Centres are functional in all 5 regions of the country. By the end December 2008 NTP had registered 494 MDR cases for treatment. Among the patients registered during first year of the programme cure rate is 70%.

According to the recommendation of in-debt review team in 2007, the NTP has lunched six months Fix Dose Combination (FDC) regimen all over the country in 15th November 2008.

I am confident that our website is supporting to the Internet users to obtain comprehensive understanding about TB situation in Nepal. Further I believe that this website will provide platform for discussion and sharing knowledge and views for interested parties and opportunity for potentials partners to extend their helping hands in our efforts in fight against Tuberculosis.

Thank You

Dr. Kashi Kant Jha

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