New Delhi: Doctors, retail chemists and pharmacists will need to notify every patient of tuberculosis to their local public health authorities or face imprisonment, the Union health ministry has said in new rules aimed at improving TB surveillance and control.

A health ministry notification released on Monday will also require government health officers to track all notified TB patients through home visits, ensure they adhere to and complete the prescribed treatment, and counsel their family members.

Doctors, chemists and pharmacists who fail to notify TB patients and public health staff who fail on follow-up action on notified TB patients may face charges under the Indian Penal Code and prison terms up to two years, the health ministry said.

The health ministry had labelled TB a notifiable disease in May 2012 but, public health experts say, the proportion of patients notified is lower than the estimated incidence. India's estimated TB incidence in 2015 was 217 cases per lakh population, but the latest TB control programme annual report says the total notification rate during 2016 was only 134 per lakh population.

The notification rules require doctors, chemists and pharmacists to notify every TB patient to local district health officers, chief medical officers, or designated officers. An electronic web-based platform allows public health officers to monitor TB patients.

"The new rules are an advance over the 2012 notification," said Madhukar Pai, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Canada who has been tracking India's TB control efforts. "There is some penalty now for not notifying cases. I see this as progress and hope private doctors, pharmacists and labs will all routinely notify TB so patients can benefit from free TB drugs and other public services."

Health officials have long been worried that many patients treated in the private sector may not be prescribed or may not adhere to appropriate or complete treatment for TB, which has to be treated with multiple drugs for six months or longer.

Inappropriate or incomplete treatment contributes to the spread of the disease and emergence of drug-resistant TB that is harder and more expensive to treat. Notification and appropriate follow-up is critical to India's TB control efforts, said Bobby John, a physician health policy specialist with Aequitas Consulting. "The reporting obligation now covers chemists more explicitly in the new order," he said.

India had last week hosted a global TB summit where it had iterated its plan to reduce TB incidence from 217 per lakh population in 2015 to 142 per lakh population by 2020 and 44 per lakh population by 2025.

Experts say the 44 per lakh target will be possible only through strong notification.