Sandeep Ahuja
About Sandeep Ahuja
Sandeep Ahuja served for many years as Additional Commissioner in the Government of India. He proceeded on sabbatical leave to join University of Chicago and earned Master of Public Policy with specialization in Health Administration & Policy. He was awarded Harris Fellowship and a World Bank Scholarship. He was selected as a McCormick Tribune Community Leadership Fellow during his stay in Chicago. His interview with Chicago Public Radio on Woldview in 2007 was the year’s top program. Sandeep has also taught a mini course on Global Health Problems at the University of Chicago.
In 2005, after over 8 years of experience of providing health care in urban slum communities, he co-founded Operation ASHA in Delhi, India, with the mission of eradicating tuberculosis. As CEO, Sandeep has led the organization since 2006. It has now become Delhi’s largest and most successful nonprofit in TB control, with 34 TB treatment centers serving thousands of patients in a population of 1 million. Sandeep is leading Operation ASHA’s rapid expansion, which plans to serve a population of about 60 million by establishing 1000 DOTS centers by 2011.
Operation ASHA’s success is due its innovative treatment approach: delivering the services to the doorsteps of the disadvantaged. As a result, Operation ASHA has dramatically improved patient outcomes, successfully overcoming the many barriers to treatment, including destitution, poverty, illiteracy, and poor environmental conditions. Patient default rate, traditionally up to 60% in slum communities, has been cut down to virtually zero. Not only that, Operation ASHA is highly cost-effective and spends only $15 in which each patient is provided with high quality treatment and personal counseling for the entire therapy, which lasts 6-9 months. Operation ASHA’s many achievements have earned it praise from the WHO, CDC and Indian Government.
(Source: http://s01.opasha.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127)
Role(s) / Profession(s)
Organization
- Operation ASHA
Language(s)
- English
Recent Contributions
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Sandeep Ahuja replied to "DR-TB in Mumbai, India" in the MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention community.
Operation ASHA focuses on slums and serves 2 million slum dwellers in five states in India. It has achieved excellent results: with increase in detection rate of 78% in two years and virtual elimination of default. It is also participating in a government led trial of treating MDR. I am attaching a brief introduction to our work below. More information is available on our website www.opasha.org . I will be happy to answer follow-up questions ...
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Sandeep Ahuja replied to "DOTS Supervisor Training Materials" in the MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention community.
Operation ASHA provides comprehensive training to its counsellors for DOTS. The results are phenomenal: detection rate had doubled in two years, and default in urban slums has been reduced by 20-30 times to less than 2%. We are now documenting the entire methodology. MIT-JPAL is assessing our impact through randomized control trials. Operation ASHA has tied up with other NGOs to train their counsellors. Sandeep Ahuja CEO, Operation ASHA Fighting Tuberculosis Worldwide www.opasha.org Member, Coordinating ...
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Sandeep Ahuja replied to "DOTS Supervisor Training Materials" in the MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention community.
Dear Colleagues, We have developed comprehensive training methodology for our counselors and program managers. This helps us in many ways. First, our results are excellent: default within 2% in urban slums for a year now, detection rate nearly double compared to the past, treatment success rate (excluding failures) as high as 95%. We have hired a senior executive recently to document the entire training process. We are already implementing a TB program for The Prajnopaya ...
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Sandeep Ahuja replied to "Looking for case reports on TB infection control efforts" in the TB Infection Control community.
Dear Anders and colleagues, Operation ASHA has developed a new paradigm that has led to excellent results: default rate around 2% and upto 100% increase in detection rate. Please go to www.opasha.org for details. Please feel free to get back to me if you have any other questions. Sandeep Ahuja CEO, Operation ASHA Fighting Tuberculosis Worldwide www.opasha.org Member, Coordinating Board, Stop TB Partnership A partnership housed by the World Health Organization
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Sandeep Ahuja replied to "Cross-Post: Turning off the spigot: reducing drug-resistant tuberculosis transmission in resource-limited settings" in the MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention community.
Of course. The entire system has been tried for over a year now in the actual settings. After the glitches were removed, implementation is in progress and over 600 patients use the system regularly. To facilitate proper detection, many alternatives have been built in. First all ten fingers are initially registered and stored and the patient has the choice of using any of those ten. So even if nine fingers have cuts, the system still ...
Recent Recommendations
- None at this time.