National Strategic Plan to End TB
Also called: NSP, NSP 2020-25 · Topic: Human Capital: Education, Health and Demographic Dividend · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The National Strategic Plan (NSP) to End TB is India's roadmap for wiping out tuberculosis. It sets out what the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare should do and in what order. The version for 2020–25 was announced in June 2020. It rests on four pillars:
- Build: strengthen the health system, staff and data.
- Prevent: stop new infections.
- Detect: find every case early.
- Treat: cure every patient found.
It matters because India set its goal of ending TB by 2025, five years before the global 2030 target. That goal was announced at the Delhi End TB Summit in March 2018. It was missed, and the target has moved toward 2030.
Example
The Detect pillar asks health workers to go out and test people instead of waiting for them to come to a clinic. This is called active case finding. Under it, AI-enabled hand-held chest X-ray machines were used for screening. The 100-Day TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan began on 7 December 2024 in 347 high-priority districts across 33 States/UTs.
Don't confuse with
- National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP): This is the programme that does the work. It was formerly called RNTCP and was renamed NTEP in 2020. The NSP is the plan the programme follows.
- Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan: This is a community campaign, launched by the President on 9 September 2022 together with Ni-kshay Mitra. It is not the strategy document. Also note that some official papers call the plan "NSP 2017–25" instead of 2020–25.