New Delhi, March 27: The government plans to bring the entire country under the Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse (Dots) by June to curb tuberculosis, which kills 1,000 people every day in India.

Dots, developed by the Chennai-based TB Research Centre, is accepted worldwide as a full-proof system to treat TB, which is a curable disease and can easily be controlled with the help of drugs.

The Massive Effort Campaign ? an international advocacy group ? recently brought out a report on how countries have fared in tackling tuberculosis. Out of every 10 patients in India, 4.8 are cured through high-quality treatment, it said.

In all the districts, talukas and villages under the Dots, the incidence of TB has come down considerably. The government, with the help of the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB, distributes tuberculosis drugs free of cost.

Despite the improvement, 1.8 million new cases ? one-fifth of the new cases in the world ? are reported annually in India.

Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss, who is an advocate of public-private initiative in healthcare, has brought on board corporate houses, non-government organisations and private doctors to sustain the government?s war against TB.

Ramadoss, who recently flagged off a run to promote public awareness on TB, said India could not achieve superpower status unless the disease was eliminated from the country.

The symbolic event, Dots ? Sure Cure for TB Awareness Run, was not only an attempt to market the message that Dots promises high cure rates but also urge policymakers and others concerned to make it available.

The minister said the reach of the Revised National TB Control Programme has been widened with the greater involvement of all sectors and efforts are on to build sustainable partnerships to treat TB and integrate anti-tuberculosis initiatives into community activities.

Although the treatment of TB costs only $10 per patient per year, many business leaders are still unaware of the disease?s impact on their workforce and the ways to prevent it. Treating the illness can, therefore, be an extremely cost-effective and rewarding operation for affected businesses.

Service provision by industries as part of corporate social responsibility would also create goodwill among the workers and in the society.

If industries get involved in checking the spread of the disease, it would substantially reduce their existing budget for TB. While expenses on the management of TB would go down, more people would be treated successfully with the Dots strategy and would return to work earlier to increase productivity and profit for the company.

According to government figures, TB costs more than $3 billion to the society annually while 100 million productive workdays are estimated to be lost due to the illness in India.