Innovating tuberculosis control in India

Tuberculosis or tb is a very serious problem in India and worldwide, and generally lacks attention in the public domain. Scientists, medical doctors, health staff and community workers make heroic efforts but the innovative potential of India remains underused. This limits flexible responses to changing challenges and opportunities - such as, for example, increasing multidrug resistance, co-infection with hiv, migration, new global health actors and funds, progress in technology - that tb control is faced with. More innovation and innovations of a different kind than new diagnostics, drugs or vaccines are possible and necessary. In order to strengthen innovative capacity, it helps to understand the efforts of coping with TB in India as a continuous struggle for innovation and control. Understanding this struggle and then strengthening the mechanisms to balance different practices of innovation and control are crucial for the future of TB control in India. Such understanding and experimentations would also offer instances of learning about how to improve TB control to other countries and to the World Health Organisation's global efforts.