SUM Hospital Launches TB Awareness Through Street Plays In Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: With Bhubaneswar reporting an estimated 6,000 new TB cases every year, the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital on Wednesday launched a programme to promote mass awareness through street plays in the city.

The street plays would be enacted by SANJOG, a Bhubaneswar-based street theatre group working for social change through theatre and folk media, in about 100 slums of Bhubaneswar by following the COVID protocols.

The first street play, enacted in the hospital campus, was inaugurated by the SOA pro-vice-chancellor and dean of IMS and SUM Hospital, Prof Gangadhar Sahoo.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof E Venkata Rao of the Community Medicine department said, “Community plays a big role in mitigating the health crisis. We have put our efforts to bring awareness among people on basics of TB, its diagnosis, treatment, care and prevention in the city with special focus on the slum areas.”

The department provided technical support and guidance in developing the street plays while the Centre for Catalysing Change (C3), a national level NGO, supported the initiative. Prof Sumitra Pattnaik of the department provided leadership in preparation of the street play.

Bibhuti Pradhan, programme officer of C3, said it was decided to adopt the street play mode because of its distinctive form of communication with a crowd-pulling ability to reach out to large population. The IMS and SUM Hospital helped in standardising the content and the approach for delivery of the message.