Why in News?

• Ministry of Health and Family Welfare today exchanged MoUs with the Ministry of AYUSH, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Railways to strengthen inter-ministerial coordination and efforts towards Tuberculosis-free India by 2025.

Highlights:

• Although entirely preventable and curable, Tuberculosis is a major obstacle to India’s human and economic development.
• India, in near future, is predicted to have world’s largest working population and a disease like TB which mostly affects adults in their most productive years, poses a great risk to the country’s economic growth potential.
• Apart from being a public health problem, TB is also associated with poor socio-economic development, marginalization and exploitation.
• The actions required to tackle the socio-economic and structural determinants of TB lie beyond the purview of the health sector alone, calling for a harmonized multisectoral response.