As counsellors, they help fellow TB patients recover. Now a fund squeeze has left them high and dry

In January 2020, an official at a primary health centre in Jharkhand told Khageshwar Kumar about a drug-resistant tuberculosis patient who had stopped taking medicines for the last two months.

Kumar stepped in.

For 18 months, he visited the patient in Parasnath block in Giridih district three times a week, counselling him in sessions that lasted three hours or more.

“He had become suicidal. Even his family had given up on his treatment,” Kumar said. “For hours I would talk to him. I was able to help him because I was a TB patient myself. I can relate to how patients feel.”

Kumar is a TB Champion or TB Vijeta, a term coined for patients cured of the bacterial infection, who are then drafted to the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme. Their role – to counsel other patients and raise community awareness.

In this case, Kumar’s efforts paid off. He convinced the patient to resume his medicines and helped him through their painful side-effects. The patient went on to finish his treatment in 2022 and is now employed with a private firm.

Khageshwar Kumar was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2007 and cured the same year.

The 29-year-old began working as a TB Champion in Giridih in 2019 for an honorarium...

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