India TB Summit: Schedule- Day 1
- 11:10 AM – 11:50 AM- Opening Session
- 11:50 AM – 1:00 PM- Panel: Equitable and Accessible TB Diagnosis in India- The Impact of COVID-19, Co-chaired by Dr Camilla Rodrigues and Dr Puneet Dewan
- 1:00 PM- 1:10 PM- Innovation and Neglected Issues in TB: Peter Small, Chair, Burning Issues & Innovation
- 1:15 PM – 1:25 PM- Burning Issue: Acoustic Epidemiology- Transforming TB Care and Control
- 2:05 PM – 3:20 PM- Panel: TB and COVID-19: The Two Pandemics, Co-chaired by Dr Lancelot Pinto and, Dr Bornali Datta
- 3:20 PM- 3:25 PM- Feature Film: Women and TB, featuring Sandhya Krishnan
- 3:25 PM – 3:30 PM- Feature Film: TB Isn’t A Full Stop, featuring Diptendu Bhattacharya
- 3:30 PM – 3:40 PM- Innovation Pitch: TB Vaccine Opportunities in the COVID Era
- 3:40 PM – 4:25 PM- Addressing the Gender Barriers to TB Care: A Live Discussion
- 4:25 PM – 4:35 PM- Innovation Pitch: Why TB Preventive Treatment Matters
- 4:40 PM – 5:40 PM- Panel: TB treatment access and strategies: voices from researchers and the field, Co-chaired by Dr Amita Gupta and, Debshree Lokhande
- 5:40 PM – 5:43 PM- Tomorrow’s program and speakers
India TB Summit: Schedule- Day 2
- 11:48 AM-11:55 AM – Introduction of Day 2 Schedule
- 12:00 PM-1:10 PM- Panel: Addressing Stigma to Ensure Equitable and Accessible TB care in India, Co-chaired by Ashna Ashesh and Deepti Chavan
- 1:15 PM- 1:25 PM- Burning Issue: Understanding the new TB drugs Pipeline
- 2:05 PM – 3:15 PM- Panel: Voices From the Field: TB and Research, Co-chaired by Dr Nerges Mistry and, Diptendu Bhattacharya
- 3:20 PM – 3:30 PM- Burning Issue: Mental health and TB
- 3:30 PM – 3:35 PM- Feature Film: From Survivor to Champion, featuring Saurabh Rane
- 3:35 PM- 3:45 PM- Innovation Pitch: Why Patient Education & Support Matters
- 3:45 PM- 4:25 PM- Let’s Talk About TB & Mental Health: A Live Discussion
- 4:25 PM- 4:38 PM- Feature Film: High-Quality Care, featuring Deepti Chavan
- 4:40 PM- 5:40 PM- Panel Discussion: Redefining Quality in TB care for Equity and Access, Co-chaired by Chapal Mehra and, Divya Sojan
- 5:40 PM- 6:15 PM- Closing Session
Tracks
Equitable and Accessible TB Diagnosis in India: The Impact of COVID-19
As India grappled with the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of TB affected individuals struggled to access timely and accurate diagnosis. This track explores the challenges that India faces in diagnosing its TB affected individuals. In doing so, it also examines comparative models that offer possible solutions to make TB diagnosis in India more equitable and accessible to all.
TB Treatment, Access and Strategies: Voices from Researchers and the Field
Treatment of TB in India has been plagued with challenges. These have included inappropriate treatment, lack of access to timely treatment, lack of side affected management and patient support among several others. Combining survivor and expert perspectives, this panel explores the challenges for those affected to access affordable, reliable and accurate treatment. It also explores how public and private systems can be improved to make TB treatment more people-centered, accessible, safer, and inclusive .
Addressing Stigma to Ensure Equitable and Accessible TB Care in India
TB related stigma significantly hampers a TB affected individual’s life. Stigma acts as a strong barrier to uptake of TB services, impacting an affected individual’s ability to continue and complete treatment. Further it can alienate the individual from family and community causing affected individuals to feel isolated and depressed. Yet, even with the evidence that stigma can put a serious dent in an affected individual’s recovery, concerted action towards stigma mitigation is wanting. This panel looks at strategies for addressing stigma to make TB care in India more equitable and accessible.
The Twin Epidemics: TB and Covid-19
In the last two years, COVID-19 has displaced TB as the world’s leading killer disease. The impact of COVID-19 has disrupted TB services leading to delays in diagnosis, treatment, and increased human suffering. Combining diverse perspectives from across the health system, this track examines in depth the impact of COVID-19 on TB. It highlights the patient perspective to identify problem areas and the health provider perspective from both public and private sectors, to examine how equitable and accessible solutions can be devised in TB care in response to the disruptions of COVID 19.
Voices from the Field: TB and Research
Research to combat the COVID-19 pandemic came at a heavy cost to TB in high burden countries like India, as TB related research was deprioritised. This panel explores the various approaches to focus on high-priority areas in TB research, and highlights the importance of these, bringing out key voices from the field. This track discusses key sub-issues such as the need for research on pediatric TB, approaches to research in primary TB care and Digital Technologies for a comprehensive care system for patients with TB, among others.
Redefining Quality in TB care for Equity and Access
As India battles TB in this pandemic, there is an urgent need to focus on providing high quality care to TB affected individuals. A key question, however, is how and who defines high quality care for affected individuals. This track explores what high quality care means from the expert patient, and community perspective. It also examines how current approaches and paradigms on quality of care can be made more representative, inclusive and person centered by including diverse perspectives to develop a comprehensive model relevant to India’s healthcare system.
Section Chairs
TB Diagnostics
Dr. Camilla Rodrigues
Senior Consultant Microbiologist, P.D. Hinduja Hospital
TB Diagnostics
Puneet Dewan
Senior Program Officer for TB, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
TB Treatment
Dr. Amita Gupta
Director, Division of Infectious Diseases Johns Hopkins Medicine
TB Treatment
Debshree Lokhande
Architect, Patient Advocate, XXDR TB Survivor
TB and Stigma
Deepti Chavan
Patient Advocate, MDR TB Survivor
TB and Stigma
Ashna Ashesh
Public Health Professional, Lawyer, MDR TB Survivor
TB Research
Dr. Nergis Mistry
Director Of The Foundation For Medical Research And The Foundation For Research In Community Health
TB Research
Diptendu Bhattacharya
Educator, Patient Advocate, MDR TB Survivor
Patient Experiences and High Quality Care
Chapal Mehra
Public Health Specialist
Patient Experiences and High Quality Care
Divya Sojan
Nursing Officer, AIIMS, New Delhi and TB Survivor
TB and Covid-19
Dr. Bornali Datta
Associate Director At Respiratory And Sleep Medicine Dept. Of Medanta, COVID Survivor
TB and Covid-19
Dr. Lancelot Pinto
Consultant Respirologist, P.D. Hinduja Hospital
TB Huddle
The TB Huddle is the summit’s open access electronic publication. It will bring together key perspectives contributed by experts, civil society, and advocates around the themes in the summit. The publication will be widely circulated among the key stakeholders including policy makers, experts and civil society in the TB landscape. Some of the key pieces from The Huddle will also be published/ available on prominent social media platforms.
In India’s fight against TB, there are numerous issues that need urgent attention but remain neglected. This segment aims to cast a spotlight on such issues and curates presentations from survivors, advocates and experts on a selection of these issues to highlight the challenges and suggest equitable and accessible solutions to them.
- Acoustic Epidemiology: Simon Grandjean Lapierre
- Mental Health Support for TB Patients – Sirisha Papineni
- Understanding the new TB Drugs Pipeline – Mark Harrington
Burning Issues
Innovation Sessions
The fight against TB is in critical need for innovative approaches and strategies. With the purpose to diffuse and introduce innovative concepts, strategies and technologies into the TB landscape in India, this innovation series brings together some key innovations and those under development pertinent to India’s TB challenge. The ideas have been selected by an innovation expert.
- Why Patient Education & Support Matters- Ritu Khattar
- Why TB Preventive Treatment Matters- Dr. K S Sachdeva
- TB Vaccine Opportunities in the COVID Era- Nina Russell
Live Sessions
Addressing The Gender Barriers To
TB Care
This live session focuses on the impact and interactions of Gender on TB care received by patients. Health staff in India, in both the public and the private sectors, are rarely sensitised to gender diversity and are ill-equipped to provide gender responsive care. Their behaviour is often guided by myths and misinformation on gender and sexuality. The result is often stigmatising, poor quality care for those that need it the most. Combining experts and diverse gender representation, this panel focusses on identifying the needs for women, and gender and sexual minorities when fighting TB. In doing so, it hopes to evolve an approach that guides efforts in everything from awareness, diagnosis, treatment, support and nutrition that remain challenges in TB care for these vulnerable groups.
The bi-directional relationship between TB and Mental Health is largely ignored in TB care. This live session focuses on the urgent need to understand and address Mental Health and TB as co-morbidities and co-epidemics to improve outcomes and quality of care. Combining lived experiences, expertise and health system perspectives, through the discussion, the panel hopes to bring focus on the critical need to focus on TB and mental health, the health system preparedness for such care, and developing sustainable solutions to provide such care.