KARACHI: The Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in collaboration with the National and Provincial TB Control Programmes and Indus Health Network is planning to launch a ‘Mobile X-Ray Vans Service’ in Karachi and other parts of Pakistan to detect TB cases.
Karachi’s Indus Hospital Chief Executive Officer Prof Dr Abdul Bari Khan, while talking to PPI, said: “Aao TB Mitao” project is funded by the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The primary recipient of this grant was the Indus Health Network’s Global Health Directorate.
The programme is a partnership effort between the National and Provincial TB Control Programmes.
He said a programme had been designed around a search, treat, and prevent approach to controlling TB. A key strategy for active case finding of TB patients is mobile X-ray vans. This year, the project is planning to launch 29 X-ray vans, 14 of which will screen people in Karachi for TB, rotating between hospitals, factories, and other congregate community settings.
The basic aim of launching mobile vans was to detect hidden cases of TB throughout the country, Dr Bari said.
The project will be launched in Karachi and other parts of Pakistan very soon, he added.
“Aao TB Mitao project” was already working with over 20 public and private hospitals in Karachi for improved TB screening, diagnostics and care while a similar project of supporting public hospitals was also being introduced in parts of Sindh and Punjab, the Indus Hospital chief executive officer said.
Ten childhood TB clinics in public and private hospitals in Karachi will be active by the end of this year with two additional centres in different parts of Sindh. Twenty more are being planned in Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, and Lahore.
Dr Bari said “Aao TB Mitao” project has operationalised 12 public and private clinics for the programmatic management of drug-resistant TB in Karachi (3), other parts of Sindh (6), and Baluchistan (3), with expansion plans to other parts of Pakistan.
He said to engage the private sector more thoroughly, the project was helping to establish a network of over 50 “Sehatmand Zindagi Centres” across Sindh and Punjab, which are private diagnostic and treatment centres that will offer free TB diagnostics and care. The centres will add capacity in the healthcare sector to manage TB free of cost to the patient.
