Background:Jalpaiguri is a remote tribal district in India with international boundaries with primarily rural(80%)population,majority scheduled-tribe/scheduled-caste, considerable proportion of these ethnic migrants living in 153 tea gardens/forest villages.In spite of successful Revised National TB Control program(RNTCP) since 2002 there are no significant decrease in TB-case-notification rates.District has highest case-detection-rates and one of highest TB-notification-rates in India.Anecdotal evidence suggests that these areas contribute substantially with adverse TB-treatment- outcomes.However there has been no previous study to document/address this issue which remains a major public-health problem.

Materials and methods:Retrospective cross sectional study using RNTCP records likeNikshay(real-time,case-based,web-based,surveillance-tool),

TB-register,Treatment-Card & laboratory-registers.Line list of tea gardens/forest-villages were made and data collected in a designed reporting format from tea-gardens.

Results:3059 NSP TB-cases were registered during 2016,44%(1348)from tea garden and forestvillage and 56%(1171)from non-tea gardens.83.5%(1126)and 85.7%(1468)treatment-success rates were reported from tea garden/forest-village and non-tea-gardens respectively.There was no significant difference in cure rates~2% may not be significant by chi square test.

Conclusions:There was no significant difference in cure-rates.Though cure-rate in the tea garden patients was satisfactory,there is further scope for improvement by mapping them as Key-population and carrying out Active Case findings using sensitive diagnostic tools like Catridge-based-Nucleic-Acid-Amplification-Test(CBNAAT)while linking TB patients to various social schemes including nutritional supplements/cash benefits.