Rotary Club of Calcutta Metro City has initiated the Thalassemia Free India campaign, a process of connecting each and every elected and nominated representative totaling nearly 4123 members of all the State Legislative Assemblies in India and also Union Territories.
The initiative shall also connect with 245 members of Rajya Sabha members and once the lower house of the Parliament consisting of the newly elected 545 members of the 18th Lok Sabha is convened most likely by mid 2024, they shall also be sensitized about the campaign.
Announcing the major plan of sensitization and creating awareness about Thalassemia across India, Subhojit Roy, member of the organization and coordinating the campaign said, ‘We had done an outreach program in 2022 & 2023 among Members of Parliament through an e-mail campaign, only one of the Rajya Sabha member responded during the campaign, Shri Jawhar Sircar of AITMC, had raised the question on thalassaemia during a Question Hour session. The office of Union Health Minister had responded with an e-mail stating that at present there is no proposal to make Thalassemia Trait Carrier Detection mandatory under the law as Public Health and Hospitals is a State subject so primary responsibility of Thalassemia treatment management and initiation of schemes for thalassemia patients was with the State Governments.’
‘After receiving this response from the Union Government, we decided to change our appeal from Mandatory Blood Test for the citizens of India to sensitizing the elected representatives both at the State and Union levels to adopt the ONE NATION ONE TEST campaign aiming at making people aware that just one test for trait carrier detection can initially reduce and in the long term completely eradicate Thalassemia from India, hence the Thalassaemia Free India campaign.’
‘The campaign will also appeal to the elected representatives to either allocate funds for the treatment of those thalassemic patients below poverty line or make their treatment completely free at Government hospitals on a priority basis. It needs priority based response due to sudden fall in haemoglobin levels apart from iron chelation. We are also approaching some of the celebrated faces and icons of India to support the campaign.’
India faces the challenge with the largest number of children with Thalassemia major in the world – about 1 to 1.5 lakhs and almost 42 million carriers of beta thalassemia trait. About 10,000 -15,000 babies with thalassemia major are born every year in India which is about 10% of the total world thalassemics.
‘We hope to reach the grassroots of India through our campaign, connecting with so many elected representatives in India is a herculean task and since we are at the cusp of an election year at the Union level, we hope to complete our outreach by the middle of 2024’, concludes Subhojit Roy.
