Welcome Message

 

Welcome! The India TB Summit 2021 is India’s first survivor and expert led summit being held in partnership with The Indian Express. Bringing together a set of perspectives, this Summit is being organized by Survivors Against TB along with Pi Consulting and a host of diverse partners. As we begin to get used to coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, we must not lose sight of an older and more intense pandemic – TB. The theme for the summit is Reimagining TB Care and
it brings together experts, policy makers, survivors and community representatives to focus on key issues and themes around India’s TB
epidemic.

The goal is to explore innovative multidisciplinary solutions to existing challenges in TB care. In doing so, the summit
also creates an informed and nuanced public narrative on TB. The event aims to be a virtual platform for the
dissemination of innovative learnings and discussions, and opportunities for mutual knowledge of working together to
address TB in India.

We, the Organizing Committee, are honoured by your participation in this event and look forward to your contribution and
inputs to shape the formative efforts of the community and the country to bring TB centre stage and to imagine a new
way forward, based on multiple perspectives, new strategies and innovation.

TB kills 1 Indian every minute and the country has the highest burden of TB globally. Yet it rarely gets the attention it needs – politically or in the public discourse. Even in this pandemic, TB has killed more Indians than COVID-19 has.

TB affects every Indian in one way or another, yet, discourse on this disease is primarily dominated by clinicians who generally see it only through the clinical lens. With COVID 19, resources are being drawn away from TB and there has been a
significant decline in the diagnosis of TB cases ever since the COVID crisis. TB services as a whole have suffered due to this pandemic.

About the Summit

This crisis presents a significant opportunity–to reimagine TB care and services and revitalise discussions on India’s TB epidemic. This can be done through a national forum that refocuses on the issues and challenges in TB care in India through TB survivor and expert-led discussions. This would improve understanding of issues in TB and provide a space for engaging in solution oriented inclusive discussions informed by multiple perspectives.

The India TB Summit 2021 is a virtual public summit led and curated by TB experts and survivors. This virtual summit will focus on key issues in TB in India to discuss key challenges with regard to the TB epidemic in India from diverse perspectives. In doing so, it will examine possible solutions, innovations and create an informed and nuanced public narrative on TB and the existing challenges in TB care in India. The theme for the summit this year is Reimagining TB Care in India.

The summit is an attempt to curate informative and accessible dialogues and panels to explore the key issues in TB care from diverse and nuanced perspectives to increase audience understanding about TB in India and to reimagine TB care in India.

About SATB

Survivors Against TB is a community-based collective of TB survivors, advocates and experts working on TB and related comorbidities. The advocates and experts have significant experience working in medicine, public health, and with communities. Based on this knowledge SATB advocates with key stakeholders on various issues such as diagnosis, treatment, access to new drugs, adherence, nutrition, mental health, stigma, and gender, for the changes necessary to make TB care more accessible and person-centred in India. https://survivorsagainsttb.com/En/
Pi Consulting is an India based research, advocacy and communications organization that specializes in the areas of strategy development, communications, advocacy and media engagement. With a grounding in evidence-based approaches, research and a strong influence of the creative arts, the group works to bring innovative approaches to analysis, problem solving and solution development in the areas of health and development. www.piconsulting.in

About Pi Consulting

Chair's Address

Dear colleagues and partners,

It is my pleasure to invite you to join us at the India TB Summit 2021 hosted in partnership with The Indian Express.

The summit is in response to the challenges that we have witnessed over the last year in
fighting and controlling TB in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, we are at a defining moment in the fight against TB-we need to pause and re-examine if our current tools and approaches are sufficient to keep the momentum in our fight against TB. The time has come
for all of us to regroup, revisit and reimagine what we are doing and how we are doing it.
Hence the summit theme is Reimagining TB Care in India.

This is the first summit where leading national and global experts have come together with survivors to curate the discussions and the sub themes of the event. Every discussion has been developed with inputs from survivors and they play a defining role in the direction and topics of the summit. Each panel has been independently curated by the chairs to ensure academic rigor and independence. As the country with the highest TB burden globally, we in
India are uniquely placed to create an open ended, participative public forum to debate, discuss and generate new ideas and solutions. 

The Summit hosts a two-day rigorous programme and serves as a critical forum to bring together communities, experts, clinicians and public health workers, health policymakers, researchers and advocates.

Through these programmes we hope to spark discussion, increase participation and improve awareness through an independent public discourse around TB. We are extremely grateful to our chairs who have, despite their exacting schedules and timelines, curated a robust and thought provoking program with diverse participation and multiple perspectives. We are also grateful to our supporters.

We look forward to welcoming you to the summit and your participation in it.

Chapal Mehra,
Summit Chair