#ExpressInvestigation: Even as India was working towards TB elimination, a key component was missing: the drugs. Documents accessed show that there was a year-on-year decline in first-line TB medicines sent to states by the Centre between 2022-2024.

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The kits were first used during the 100-day campaign that was rolled out December last year. During the campaign, 12.97 crore people were screened, of whom 7.19 lakh people were found to have TB. Importantly, 2.85 lakh of these patients were asymptomatic.

The machines are AI-enabled to quickly tell a technician whether a person may have TB. With a push towards eliminating TB, several companies have started making these machines over the last two years.

Hand-held chest X ray devices were recently added to the national programme for screening TB cases - they are a good tool for detecting asymptomatic cases. These light, portable, battery-operated machines can be taken to the community and actively screen people for the disease.

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Early trials have, however, shown promise in the treatment of some gastrointestinal cancers and brain cancers. Read full story:

Three, the same type of cancer can be molecularly very different in different patients - sometimes even within the same patient. Four, even if a CAR-T therapy is designed, it is difficult for it to penetrate the tumour's microenvironment.

One, unlike blood cancers, solid cancer tumours are not in the same physical location as the immune cells ie blood. Two, there aren't enough good targets that the T cells can be trained to identify -- many of the solid cancer targets are also present on healthy cells.

CAR-T cell therapy engineers a person's own immune cells to recognise and kill cancerous cells. While it has offered hope to patients with blood cancers where other treatments have failed, the therapy has been difficult to replicate in solid cancers for several reasons.

While CAR-T cell therapy has become available for the treatment of blood cancers, there is now some positive news when it comes to the use of the technology for solid cancers as well.

In the 20 years since India's patent law was changed to allow product patenting - instead of process patenting - compulsory licensing has been invoked only once. In 2012, a license was granted to Natco Pharma for a cancer drug.

The mother of a 14-year-old Bengaluru boy with Cystic Fibrosis also filed a similar petition, considering the drug is not available in India. And, the family has to shell out R70 lakh to import three months' medicine.

For Seba PA, 26 the cost of breathing easy, moving around and enduring fewer bouts of infection comes at the steep price of nearly Rs 18 lakh per month. So, she filed a petition urging the govt to invoke compulsory licensing.

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Artificial ripening of fruits is allowed because some fruits continue to ripen even after harvesting. hat’s why they cannot be stored and transported after ripening as they tend to spoil. So, traders harvest them raw and ripen them artificially at the destination market.

The use of calcium carbide, which is used to generate acetylene gas, was rampant for ripening fruits such as mangoes, bananas, and papayas. To prevent this, FSSAI allowed the use of ethylene gas in 2016. Ethylene is a natural plant hormone and not harmful to humans.

While the food regulator allows the use of certain fruit ripening agents, the use of calcium carbide is forbidden. @fssaiindia has asked state and regional officers to crack down on the use of such chemicals that is prohibited.