Executive Summary 1. Pulmonary TB is among the top killer diseases. According to the official statistics on the survey of causes of death in rural India, the relative importance of pulmonary TB, even among the top killer diseases, has been gradually rising in the country. It imposes a cost on the economy in terms of current and future output loss because of premature deaths and ill health.
Patients often discontinue treatment.
This creates several problems such as low cure rates, high relapse rates, high case fatality rates, drug resistance, etc. There are several benefits from successful application of the of the DOTS strategy. Therefore DOTS could well succeed if sufficient effort and resources were invested. In order to ensure that DOTS succeeds in India, several aspects of implementation, organization and management, need to be geared up. However, it is an important first step to believe that all these efforts can be fruitful, that they can yield good returns, that they are feasible and that these efforts can contribute to the larger social goals of alleviating poverty, raising the productivity of the poorer sections, and improving the quality of life in the society.