TB Alert India (TBAI)

TB Alert India is a public health organisation working on tuberculosis in India. Its work spans community outreach, care and support for people with TB, advocacy, research, and partnerships with government and other stakeholders. It organises its own work around six functions: awareness generation, stakeholder engagement, capacity building, identification and referrals, care and support, and partnerships. Much of its delivery happens through field teams working directly in urban slums and districts, alongside the government TB programme rather than parallel to it. It runs state-level field operations in several parts of the country, including Telangana, Maharashtra and Punjab.

Major Areas of Work

• Outreach: community-level work to find people with TB symptoms, raise awareness and bring presumptive cases forward for testing.

• Care and Support: helping people who have been diagnosed to start treatment, stay on it and access free services.

• Advocacy: work with government bodies, health officials and communities to improve how TB is treated and talked about.

• Research: studies and documentation that inform how TB programmes are designed and delivered.

• Partnerships: working with district TB units, treatment supervisors and other stakeholders so that campaigns run through existing public health structures.

Major Initiatives and Programmes

• Joint Effort for Elimination of Tuberculosis (JEET): an ongoing programme aimed at TB elimination, delivered in coordination with the public health system.

• Breaking the Barriers: an ongoing project addressing the barriers that stop people with TB from seeking or completing care.

• Establishing Linkages and Strengthening DR-TB Services: an ongoing project focused on drug-resistant TB, connecting patients to services and strengthening the services themselves.

• Divine: an ongoing project in the organisation's current TB portfolio.

• Active Case Finding (ACF): field campaigns that screen communities for TB, including work with handheld X-ray, run through district teams in states such as Telangana and Maharashtra.

TB Alert India has also completed a substantial set of earlier projects, including Axshya, THALI, TAP, PRATAM, CEPT, TOSS, Ripend, DR-TB linkages, and a pilot of a patient-centric linkages model for public sector DR-TB patients. It publishes annual reports, audit reports and research publications on its site.

Impact

TB Alert India has worked across multiple Indian states, including Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and Telangana, engaging outreach workers, treatment supervisors, and community health volunteers to identify and support TB patients. Its JEET project alone scaled the Patient-Provider Support Agency model across more than 100 districts in nine high TB burden states between 2018 and 2020, before elements of the model transitioned to government funding under the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP). TBAI's work is funded in part by the Global Fund, and it operates within India's broader public-private TB elimination effort under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Leadership

• Vikas Panibatla, Chief Executive
• Ramesh Dasari, Head of Programs
• Balakrishna Maryala, M&E Lead
• Ravinder Gangula, Program Manager, IMPACT India project

TB Alert India suits people who want direct, field based work on one of India's largest public health challenges, with close government and private sector coordination. The organisation offers over two decades of grassroots experience in TB outreach and patient support, backed by international partnership with TB Alert UK and funding from global health donors. It appeals to people who want hands on public health work with measurable outcomes on TB diagnosis, treatment adherence, and patient welfare.