A multi-stakeholder event involving private hospitals and state health officials was organised by Medanta in association with The Union, under the direction of the Central TB Division, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), in order to increase the impact of Mission TB Free India.

Deliberations with Apollo Medical College, Yashoda Super Specialty Hospital, Amrita Hospital, stakeholders from a number of other hospitals, and members of the NTEP were conducted to encourage private hospitals from around Delhi-NCR to participate in the scheme. Stakeholders were urged to adopt the "Active Case Finding" methodology of TB detection in order to assist the national campaign.

Rajender P. Joshi, Deputy Director General of the Central TB Division, MoHFW, spoke at the event and said, "In order to improve the infrastructure for treating TB, tremendous progress has been done. Yet, we must acknowledge that multi-stakeholder models through collaborations with private hospitals are the way to go if we are to scale up access to therapy. Reaching the national objective of TB eradication by 2025 by collaboration with Medanta and other private hospitals is a major step in the right direction."

The objective of this engagement program is to persuade private institutions to actively participate in TB screening and help the state close the TB care delivery gap. This will reinforce the effective NTEP's efforts to identify pockets of unscreened population that harbour TB and create connections between those patients and government-run treatment programmes.

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