Time: 8.30 am – 6 pm

Venue: Maple Hall, India Habitat Centre

About India Health Fund
India Health Fund (IHF) is an initiative supported by Tata Trusts in collaboration with The Global Fund. IHF operates as an aggregator platform for pooled financing towards validation, implementation and scale up of innovations targeted at infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis and Malaria in India.

About the Consultation
Achieving the goal of a TB Free India will require revolutionary approaches and innovative thinking. IHF is fully committed to identifying and supporting innovations that can accelerate India’s fight to end tuberculosis in a non-linear way. Organising a multi-stakeholder roundtable consultation was the first step in this direction to identify the most pressing and relevant problem statements within TB care delivery that necessitate innovative solutions and approaches.

This consultation brought together eminent experts, leading TB practitioners as well as representatives of the patient community to discuss the critical challenges impinging upon comprehensive patient centric care. There was an encouraging turn-out of over 40 participants from a diverse group of stakeholders including government officials, technical institutions, international donor agencies, non-governmental implementation partners, community-based organisations, private practitioners, TB survivors and activists.

Aim
The broad aim of the consultation was to identify pivotal issues and gap areas within TB care and services, that have remained unaddressed or inadequately addressed till date. Going forward, IHF aims to specifically focus on the challenges that would benefit from catalytic investments towards breakthrough and innovative solutions.

Key discussion areas:
Over the course of the day in-depth discussions were centred around the following themes to help identify the most pressing challenges pertaining to each of these:

• Need of the hour for tackling the TB crisis in India
• Intensifying TB case finding to reach the ‘missing million’
• Strengthening the Continuum of Care, improving adherence and managing adverse drug reactions
• Strengthening surveillance and reporting systems
• Joining the dots: communities and health care providers
• Creating a favourable ecosystem for tackling TB

Way forward
The deliberations at the consultation and the resulting problem statements will potentially inform and direct IHF’s future investments in searching for innovative solutions and strategies in TB elimination.

Manoj Kumar, CEO of India Health Fund, said “India has set up a very aggressive target to eliminate TB by 2025. This requires all the stakeholders to work together in a mission mode and create focused strategies to fight against TB. This also requires a pipeline of disruptive innovations which can augment and accelerate the national programme and create non-linear impact. At India Health Fund, our strategy is to play a catalytic role, by creating an aggregated pool of funds to identify and support the most impactful innovations”.