4. Impact of Disaster to the Tuberculosis Control Program:
Rationale for rapid assessment and formation of rapid response committee The challenges Nepal’s recent earthquakes pose for the National Tuberculosis Program are significant. In Nepal, TB remains an ongoing public health burden, with health officials keen to ensure that advances in recent years are not threatened.
Historically when there is a disaster of high scale, focus is immediately directed towards the rescue and relief efforts and care and control of communicable diseases such as TB are rarely addressed during the acute phase. Literature arising from lesson learn post Haiti and Japan earthquakes indicate the benefit of starting surveillance for TB in the acute phase in TB endemic countries, as there is a high risk of TB silently spreading.8 This is of particular concern among IDPs where the risk of transmission is higher.9 With this in mind, the Nepal’s National Tuberculosis Centre formed a Rapid Response Committee on the 20th May 2015 that has set about conducting a Post-Disaster Rapid Assessment of the National Tuberculosis Program for effective management of TB cases and continuation of its services to maintain the achievements of TB program till date.