New Delhi:

Former Union Minister and Member of Parliament Anurag Singh Thakur took part in a unique initiative to spread awareness about Tuberculosis (TB) on Sunday. In a friendly cricket match named TB Free India Awareness Cricket Match, he captained the Lok Sabha Speaker XI team while Union Minister Kiren Rijiju led the Rajya Sabha Chairman XI.

Mr Thakur scored an unbeaten 111 runs playing a captaincy innings, owing to which the Speaker 11 team defeated the Chairman 11 by 73 runs, according to an official press release.

टीबी हारेगा, देश जीतेगा!

आदरणीय प्रधानमंत्री श्री @narendramodi जी के वर्ष 2025 तक भारत से टीबी की समाप्ति के संकल्प को साकार करने की दिशा में लोकसभा अध्यक्ष XI Vs. राज्यसभा सभापति XI के बीच टीबी मुक्त भारत जागरूकता क्रिकेट मैच का भव्य आयोजन हुआ।

मुख्य अतिथि आदरणीय लोकसभा… pic.twitter.com/z7LpIswPkC

— Anurag Thakur (@ianuragthakur) December 15, 2024

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla inaugurated the match by releasing the Tricolor balloons in the air, while in the closing ceremony of the match, Union Minister Piyush Goyal distributed prizes to the players and encouraged them.

All the MPs took the field wearing a special kind of jersey, which read – TB Harega Aur Bharat Jitega (TB will lose and India will win).

एक फ़्रेंडली क्रिकेट मैच के साथ आज हमारे सांसदों ने #TBMuktBharat का मैसेज दिया है। स्वस्थ प्रतिस्पर्धा के साथ खेले गए इस मैच का एक ही लक्ष्य है; TB haarega, Desh jeetega!
माननीय सांसदों के ऐसे प्रयास देश भर के युवाओं को सकारात्मक दिशा की ओर प्रेरित करते हैं। मुझे आशा है कि संसद… pic.twitter.com/NrFYzrFFGe

— Om Birla (@ombirlakota) December 15, 2024

The match was played at Major Dhyanchand Stadium in Delhi and Lok Sabha Speaker XI batted first.

Captain Anurag Thakur completed his century in 59 balls and scored an unbeaten 111 runs facing a total of 65 balls.

Lok Sabha Speaker XI team set a target of 251 runs in front of Chairman 11 team after losing 7 wickets in 20 overs.

In response, the Chairman 11 team could score only 178 runs after losing 8 wickets, in which former cricketer Mohammad Azharuddin scored the highest 74 runs facing 42 balls.

Anurag Thakur was awarded the Man of the Match for his performance. The best bowler was Deepender Hooda, best fielder Nishikant Dubey, best batsman Mohammad Azharuddin, golden duck jointly by Ram Mohan Naidu and Imran Pratapgarhi, super six by K. Sudhakar, super catch by Manoj Tiwari, maximum boundaries by Anurag Thakur, fighter of the match title was given to Chandrashekhar Azad.

Mr Birla, who arrived to inaugurate this match congratulated the MPs for taking part in the awareness game.

“The Parliament of India represents 140 crore people and expects that the society should benefit from the experience of the public representatives. We have to make India TB free by 2025 and this friendly match of MPs will work to spread awareness about TB eradication. I congratulate all the MPs participating in this match and the organiser of this program Anurag Singh Thakur ji that they have made a meaningful effort towards eradicating a disease like TB. If we all work with full determination to spread awareness about TB elimination in our respective areas, then we will definitely be successful in eradicating TB from India,” he said.

Piyush Goyal said, “First of all, I would like to congratulate Anurag Thakur ji, the organiser of this wonderful and successful program, who won everyone’s heart with his batting today and who brought so many MPs on one platform to spread awareness. Anurag ji had given a message against TB by organising a similar match in 2018 and after today’s match, I am hopeful that his resolution will go across the country and such matches will be organised in many other cities as well. I am sure that such events will give more strength to the resolution of the Hon’ble Prime Minister to make India TB free by 2025.

Mr Thakur said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji has set a target of making India TB free by 2025. And to spread awareness towards achieving this target, selected MPs from all parties of the Indian Parliament participated in this friendly cricket match named TB Free India Awareness Cricket Match. Awareness about TB should reach every corner of the country. To promote this cause, we have united with team spirit, without any politics.”

“Our endeavour is that such events should continue to be held in the future and the state governments of various states should also come forward to spread awareness against TB through such events. The target of eradicating TB worldwide is 2031. If you see, from 2015 till now, there has been a 38 percent decline in TB-related deaths in India. There is an approximate 18 percent decline in new cases. It has decreased by approximately 8 percent worldwide. This means India is doing better than the world. Today, there is a treatment for it and the government also provides free medicines. It also gives Rs 1,000 for nutrition,” he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

With childhood TB continuing to remain a “staggering problem” in India, “eliminating” TB by 2025 might be extremely challenging.

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Compared with adults, children are more vulnerable to acquiring TB infection and developing the disease. Globally, TB is now regarded as the leading cause of death from infectious diseases for children of all ages. As per a study that looked at 31 studies, the estimated mortality of children with TB who fail to receive treatment is about 22%; the case fatality ratio in children less than five years is 43%.

According to the WHO, there are critical gaps in detecting TB cases among children despite significant progress and greater understanding of the challenges faced in addressing TB in children. For instance, globally, at least 1.2 million children aged less than 15 years fall ill with TB every year, and around 67 million children get infected, placing them at the risk of developing TB disease at a later date. However, 56% of the 1.2 million children who develop TB annually are not detected, says an October 2022 paper.

As per the 2022 WHO global TB report, last year, children aged less than 15 years across the world accounted for 11% of the total estimated incident TB cases. Notwithstanding the 56% estimated TB detection gap in children globally, India contributes nearly one-third to the global childhood TB caseload. According to the 2022 paediatric TB management guidelines for India, nearly 0.34 million children aged less than 15 years are estimated to get TB disease every year; children in this age group in India are estimated to contribute about 13% of the TB caseload.

Even as the number of TB cases being detected and notified in India continued to increase from 85,780 in 2015 to 24,22,121 in 2022, at around 6%, children constituted only a minor fraction of the total annual cases notified during the same period. This points to a “gap of 4-5% in total notification against the estimated incidence”.

“Children continue to be relatively underrepresented in the national TB surveillance system,” notes the National Strategic Plan 2020-2025 report. “Under diagnosis of paediatric TB remains a challenge. The most pressing challenges include limited capacity for case detection, lack of sensitive diagnostics…”

For instance, while the total notifications in 2022 were over 2.4 million, paediatric TB cases notified were just 1,35,734 — which is 5.6% vis-a-vis an estimated contribution of 13%.

With TB cases among children less than 15 years in India estimated to be 3,42,000 every year, the detection of only 1,35,734 children in 2022 would mean that over 2,00,000 (60%) children with TB were missed last year alone. With TB notification among children being nearly constant at 6% for many years now despite active case finding of child household contacts of pulmonary TB patients, the cumulative number of children with TB who have been missed would be huge.

“In 2019, the NTEP reported 1.5 lakh TB cases of children aged 0-14 years, indicating a gap of 55% in TB notifications in this age group,” notes a July 2021 Collaborative framework to address the burden of tuberculosis among children and adolescents report.

“Diagnosis of TB among children is comparatively more challenging, and hence many cases are missed, diagnostic delays are frequent, leading to poor treatment outcomes,” says the India TB report 2023.

Though children are required to be tested using highly sensitive molecular tests at the first point of contact, smear microscopy is often used. Difficulty of children below five years to produce sputum and low bacterial load in children and even being paucibacillary pose a huge challenge in TB diagnosis and drug-resistance screening. “Diagnosis of childhood TB often relies on clinical evaluation supported by tools such as chest X-rays. However, these tools have known limitations in terms of accuracy and reliability,” says Dr. Chandrakant Lahariya, physician and public health specialist.

For instance, in 2022, of the 3,00,000 molecular tests performed on children, just 37,000 (12%) were bacteriologically confirmed, thus making TB diagnosis in children very challenging. Additionally, “only a small portion of children and extrapulmonary TB patients are successfully screened for drug resistance”.

Even as the bulk of the cases in children is pulmonary TB, which is easier to detect, up to 32% of TB cases are extrapulmonary, which makes TB detection more challenging. Finally, there has been a reduction in BCG vaccination of children during the pandemic. “Globally, the estimated number of children who did not receive any vaccine increased during the pandemic. There has been a downslide in BCG vaccine coverage in India as well — [from 92% in 2019 to] 85% in 2020 and 84% in 2021 [which increased to 91% in 2022],” says Dr. Lahariya.