• Surendra K Sharma, Alladi Mohan, L S Chauhan, J P Narain, P Kumar, D Behera, K S Sachdeva, Ashok Kumar, Task Force for Involvement of Medical Colleges in Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme, Priyanka Agarwal, N T Awadh, Avi Bansal, S Baruah, Pranab Baruwa, V H Balasangameshwara, Rani Balasubramanian, A K Bhardwaj, Salil Bhargav, Sarabjit Chadha, V K Chaddha, Manpreet Chhatwal, A L Da Costa, D P Dash, Jaydip Dep, Saroj Dhingra, S Dhooria Harmeet, T R Frieden, Anil Garg, Reuben Granich, Vinay Gulati, Deepak Gupta, Dheeraj Gupta, K B Gupta, K N Gupta, Jaikishan, A K Janmeja, M S Jawahar, S L Jethani, S K Jindal, K R John, O P Kalra, V P Kalra, A T Kannan, S Kayshap, G Keshav Chander, S S Khushwa, R S Kushwaha, Vinod Kumar, B Laskar, K R Leela Itty Amma, A T Leuva, K Maitra Malay, A M Mesquita, Thomas Mathew, Yamuna Mundade, Radha Munje, Somil Nagpal, C Nagaraja, Sanjeev Nair, O R Narayanan, C N Paramasivan, Malik Parmar, Rajendra Prasad, A C Phukan, Raj Prasanna, Anil Purty, Ranjani Ramachandran, Rajeswari Ramachandran, C Ravindran, H R Reddy Raveendra, S Sahu, Santosha, Rohit Sarin, Soumya Sarkar, K C Sarma, P Saxena, Shruti Sehgal, N Sharath, Geetanjali Sharma, Nandini Sharma, P K Shridhar, R S Shukla, Om Singh, N Tombi Singh, Varinder Singh, Rupak Singla, Neena Sinha, Pranay Sinha, Sanjay Sinha, Rajesh Solanki, A Sreenivas, S Srinath, Kandi Subhakar, J C Suri, Palash Talukdar, Jamie Tonsing, S P Tripathy, Preetish Vaidyanathan, R P Vashist, and K Venu.
• Department of Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. sksharma.aiims@gmail.com
• Indian J Med Res. 2013 Feb 1; 137 (2): 283-94.

AbstractMedical college faculty, who are academicians are seldom directly involved in the implementation of national public health programmes. More than a decade ago for the first time in the global history of tuberculosis (TB) control, medical colleges of India were involved in the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) of Government of India (GOI). This report documents the unique and extraordinary course of events that led to the involvement of medical colleges in the RNTCP of GOI. It also reports the contributions made by the medical colleges to TB control in India. For more than a decade, medical colleges have been providing diagnostic services (Designated Microscopy Centres), treatment [Directly Observed Treatment (DOT) Centres] referral for treatment, recording and reporting data, carrying out advocacy for RNTCP and conducting operational research relevant to RNTCP. Medical colleges are contributing to diagnosis and treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-TB co-infection and development of laboratory infrastructure for early diagnosis of multidrug-resistant and/or extensively drug-resistant TB (M/XDR-TB) and DOTS-Plus sites for treatment of MDR-TB cases. Overall, at a national level, medical colleges have contributed to 25 per cent of TB suspects referred for diagnosis; 23 per cent of 'new smear-positives' diagnosed; 7 per cent of DOT provision within medical college; and 86 per cent treatment success rate among new smear-positive patients. As the Programme widens its scope, future challenges include sustenance of this contribution and facilitating universal access to quality TB care; greater involvement in operational research relevant to the Programme needs; and better co-ordination mechanisms between district, state, zonal and national level to encourage their involvement.

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