where there is No doctor

EKTA NIKETAN TB CENTRE

A day at Ekta Niketan TB Centre

Ekta Niketan is a community-based project committed to control TB from its root causes. We provide quality treatment to patients in remote rural areas, support undernourished TB patients, empower communities, and address social and political reasons that sustain poverty and tuberculosis in marginalised communities.

Our project comprises - centres to treat TB, nutrition for the needy, connecting with people and pro-people professionals, and reaching out policy makers and TB experts.

OUR PROJECT

At Ekta Niketan, activities to raise awareness of tuberculosis are neither in class-room trainings nor through meetings in communities. Instead health workers, during the clinic, share information about TB, nutrition, and provisions available in the government programme .

Posters display at the centre highlighting social and political determinants of TB. Health workers read the messages one-to-one or during small group sessions.

TB CENTRE

EKTA NIKETAN TB Centre is in the middle of a village, the nearest town being 25 km away in the district of Deoghar. It is a popular centre for TB patients in the area; families undertake long journeys, often bypassing their government health centres nearby. Government’s TB Elimination programme (NTEP) provides medical supplies to help run the TB centre.

Two satellite centres, in Sahajpur and Jugiatari villages respectively, are in neighbouring districts of Jamtara in Jharkhand and Jamui in the neighbouring state of Bihar.

NUTRITION FOR THE NEEDY

RAISING AWARENESS

TB patients need good nutrition; adequate protein in diet helps develop immunity and controls the TB bacteria to grow. TB patients who access Ekta Niketan are thin and weak due to the disease and the lack of nutritious food.

The NTEP provides cash doles to TB patients as food support; but it is irregular and does not reach timely when patients need most.

Ekta Niketan provides nutritional supplements selectively to very weak patients e.g. adults weighing 35 kg or under. Health workers prepare nutritional supplements using locally available ingredients.

REACHING OUT PROFESSIONALS

Ekta Niketan organises learning workshops at its premises. Community workers with minimum formal education can gain hands on training to implement holistic TB control programme.

After years of trials and practice, community TB tools such as TB patient record form, psychosocial tool to determine treatment compliance, diagnostic tools that are in use at Ekta Niketan are available on request. These tools are appropriate for any community TB programme.

LEARNING COMMUNITY TB

Ekta Niketan reaches out a range of professionals across India - public health, social scientists, academics, legal experts and writers sharing stories of TB patients, analytical reports and documents.

It invites cured patients and professionals in roundtable meetings and workshops at its premises and discusses ways forward to control TB holistically.