Azad to inaugurate private ward at 'LRS Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases'

Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad will inaugurate the private ward at the 'LRS Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases' here tomorrow.

This will be the first private ward facility for TB patients in the government sector.

It may be mentioned that the LRS Institute had its humble beginning as a TB Hospital under the TB Association of India in 1956. With renewed priority to Tuberculosis Control both nationally and globally, the Government of India decided to upgrade the Institute as an Autonomous Institute directly under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 1991. This acted as a catalyst for the hospital. Since then the Institute has grown rapidly in patient care facilities, research activities and training programmes.

The institute has been in the forefront in the fight against tuberculosis and was part of the team, which analyzed the strengthening required in the National TB Control Programme of 1962 and subsequently, the development of the Revised National Control Programme (RNTCP) strategy.

The institute was instrumental in pilot testing the RNTCP for technical soundness and operational feasibility in 1996 before the country launched the same in 1997. Further, with the emergence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), the institute embarked on designing the Programmatic Management of Drug Resistant TB (PMDT) for the country with assistance from the Global MDR-TB Advisory Group (Green Light Committee) in 2002.

The institute has been a part of all national policy decisions in Tuberculosis such as the Infection Control policy, Paediatric Tuberculosis Guidelines, Operational Research Strategy, TB-HIV linkage, Training of Trainers and Laboratory Networking in the country.