TB, a centuries old menace in India, still evades elimination due to a combination of factors including social stigma, poor availability of testing facilities and drugs as well the lower socio-economic profiles of a high proportion of patients. As per the Global TB report, 2019, published by the World Health Organization (WHO), every year an estimated 2.7 million people are suspected to have TB in India - making India account for 1/4th of the World’s TB cases - the highest number of cases of any country. Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a significant problem accounting for 558,000 of the 10 million new cases occurring annually, worldwide. India has the largest proportion (27%) of drug resistant-TB patients in the World. TB kills about half a million Indians every year -which means a TB patient is dying almost every minute in India. India not only accounts for the greatest burden of both TB and MDR-TB in the world, but it also has the highest gap between TB incidence and number of reported cases. This gap is due to a combination of underreporting of detected cases and under-diagnosis.

From 2010 onwards, FIND has been a key technical and implementing partner of the NTEP, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India for sustenance and expansion of its nationwide laboratory network for drug-resistant TB diagnostic services. The projects have radically changed the diagnostic landscape for the NTEP’s management of Drug resistant-TB in India.

Through ongoing and previous grants from The Global Fund, FIND India has supported the establishment of 61 TB culture and drug susceptibility testing (C&DST) laboratories for the NTEP. FIND continues to ensure sustenance of service delivery in the culture-based drug susceptibility testing (C-DST) laboratories through management of laboratory reagent supplies, consumables, maintenance of equipment. FIND India has also supported the NTEP in modernizing its diagnostic network through introduction of genome sequencing technologies at 6 sites across India.  Additionally, FIND India is rolling out a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) software across the NTEP network to help establish uniformity, minimize data-entry errors and automate notifications; the software is integrated with NTEP’s Nikshay web-portal.

• Since 2010, a total of ~2.1 million patients have been tested for TB and DR- TB using newer diagnostic technologies across
• FIND-supported laboratories and > 130,000 cases of DR- TB have been detected.
• More than 3,600 personnel have been provided with onsite/national-level training on various laboratory techniques, diagnostic tools and quality assessment