Prevalence of screening for TB among household contacts of TB patients in Dhaka Bangladesh

Overview
Despite the vast amount of studies conducted globally on the importance of active case identification, passive case identification remains the integral initiative in identifying tuberculosis (TB) cases, especially in Bangladesh. Due to this, a large number of TB cases are going unidentified, thus not yielding an accurate picture of the actual number of TB cases in the country. This under-reporting also means TB transmission in the communities is rampant. There is very little any information regarding the proportion of household contacts of TB patient who have been tested for tuberculosis, and also out of those tested, how many of them have tested positive and been diagnosed with having TB. Hence, this study aimed to add to the existing gap and provide support to the urgent need to test close contacts of TB patients in order to prevent the transmission and occurrence of TB. This could eventually lead toward a change in TB policy in Bangladesh.

Activities
For over three months, the project interviewed TB patients in Dhaka who were undertaking treatment at the time of the study, along with their family members.

Partners/donor

Donor: Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM)

Highlights

• An abstract was submitted to the 13th International Conference on Urban Health, 2016
• A manuscript was submitted to the journal “Global Heal Action-GHA”, and is currently under peer review.