Phulbani: The KISS Foundation has joined the Prime Minister TB Free Campaign ‘TB Harega Desh Jitega’ launched by Govt of India to make the country TB free by 2025. It has adopted the entire Kandhamal district with the efforts of Kandhamal Lok Sabha MP and Founder of KISS Foundation Dr Achyuta Samanta to make the district TB free.
On Monday, Dr Samanta launched the ‘Food Basket’ distribution programme for TB patients. The food basket comprises 3 kg of cereals and millets for the adult patients; 2 kg of cereals and millets for children; 1.5 kg and 1 kg pulses for adults and children respectively; 250 grams and 150 grams of vegetables cooking oil for adults and children and 1 kg and 750 grams of groundnuts for adults and children respectively.
In the first phase, nutritional food distribution programme has been launched for 606 TB patients including 39 children in 6 blocks at Phulani and another 6 blocks in Baliguda.
The food basket distribution will be carried out every month. KISS Foundation will incur an expenditure of Rs 5 lakh every month and approx Rs 40 lakh for the next six months. Dr Samanta informed that KISS Foundation will bear all the expenses under the mission.
While distributing the food baskets to the patients, Dr Samanta said the objective of distributing the baskets is to support the nutritional requirement of the patients as medicine alone is not enough to cure patients.
Collector of Kandhamal Ashish Ishwar Patil lauded the initiative of KISS Foundation of adopting the district and said that the support will expedite Govt of India’s mission to eliminate the disease from across the country by the targeted year of 2025. Additional District Medical Officer Dr Abhay Patnaik was present on the occasion.
