If in 2022 only 1.6 million (66%) of the 2.4 million notified TB cases received at least one month’s payment of ₹500 under the Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana direct benefit transfer programme for nutritional support as per the India TB report 2023, a study that analysed the data of nine States found that in 2022 76.1% of TB patients received at least one month’s payment, up from 56.9% in 2018. Though the time taken to receive the first payment has reduced since 2018, more than 50% of patients had to wait for over three months in 2022 to receive the first instalment. The study which analysed the data from 2018 to 2022 of nine randomly selected States — Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Odisha, Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Meghalaya — were published recently in the journal BMC Public Health. The study was conducted by researchers at the Chennai-based National Institute of Epidemiology.
The States were classified as high, medium and low based on the overall performance of the NTEP in the given State. States with a TB score of over 80 were grouped under high, while those with a TB score between 60 and 80 were classified as medium, and States with a score of less than 60 were clubbed under low. Three States from each category were randomly selected. Delhi, Rajasthan and Bihar had TB scores less than 60, while Uttarakhand, Telangana and Tamil Nadu had medium TB scores, and Meghalaya, Odisha and Gujarat had high TB scores of over 80.
In 2022, Delhi (67.2%) followed by Tamil Nadu (45.3%) and Gujarat (45.2%) recorded the most improvement in cash disbursement at the end of five years. Odisha and Uttarakhand, which had a high TB score of 85.1% and 72.9% respectively in 2018, reported a further 10% increase in performance in 2022.
