Feature

Tackling Tuberculosis among the World’s Poorest

Sandeep Ahuja, MPP’06 and Dr. Shelly Batra spent this month in Chicago teaching a mini-course to Harris School students and spreading the word about their battle against tuberculosis in India.

“We have taken a new paradigm,” said Batra, a surgeon and president of Operation Asha, speaking to Harris School alumni last week. “We are taking TB treatments to the doorstep of slum dwellers.”

Ahuja—on leave from his job as an Indian government commissioner of customs—and Batra founded Operation Asha in the United States and India in 2005 to treat tuberculosis in Delhi’s poorest residents. These slum dwellers live on ten cents a day in crammed neighborhoods of cardboard homes where disease spreads like wildfire. Incorporated as one general health center, the organization has added over 30 TB treatment centers to its operations and is now the largest nonprofit in Delhi working on TB control.

“We were looking for something that was most cost effective and has a big impact on the community,” said Ahuja discussing why they chose to focus on TB. “TB is one thing at this time where at this time you can make a large impact.” As part of the UN Development Programme’s Millennium Development Goals, ninety percent of Operation Asha’s costs are fulfilled through funds from organizations including the World Health Organization, USAID, and the United Nations.

Batra and Ahuja explained how they train volunteers at local business—such as local shops or telephone call centers—to distribute medication to TB patients and ensure treatment regimens are completed. In addition, they work with paid counselors to educate Delhi’s poor about TB symptoms and to find people to direct to the local hospitals and diagnostic centers. Patients are then referred to the treatments centers run by the volunteers. Stressed Batra, “Epidemics can be controlled only by active case finding.”

The centers spread throughout Delhi and operate under flexible hours, making patients more likely to complete treatment than if they had to travel to a distant hospital.

In the four-lecture mini-course, which ran from February 14 to 25, Ahuja and Batra focused on diseases of developing countries with an emphasis on tuberculosis and its management. The course also provided some clinical analysis of TB and a perspective of the public health system.

“I want to tell students that public health is a very, very important issue,” said Batra. “And public health issues are not one but many.” She added that most of these issues are in the developing world where people do not have “access to proper health care.” More people—including physicians and policymakers—need to get involved and small steps will yield big results.