impact
An Improved Pathway for Active Contact Tracing
People in close contact with people with TB are at a high risk of contracting TB infection and active disease. The TB programme recommends systematic contact screening investigations for all people with TB to ensure early identification and detection of TB. However, the programme faces challenges in providing TB screening for contacts due to associated stigma, confidentiality issues and easy accessibility and availability of diagnostic services.
To strengthen the household contact investigation among people with smear positive pulmonary TB enrolled with the Chennai Corporation, a two-year pilot intervention was implemented by REACH in 2016-2017 under Wave 4 of the TB REACH project, and subsequently funded by Advance Access & Delivery.
The initiative covered 36 Tuberculosis Units in Chennai including North, Central, and South Chennai districts.
highlights
Transition of the program to the Greater Chennai Corporation
Capturing family details on an electronic data base system
Incentive-based approach towards screening household contacts
Symptom-based screening and x-ray based screening
Use of Gene Xpert (CB-NAAT) technology for confirmatory diagnosis
Treatment initiation of contacts diagnosed with TB from the public health system
PROJECT objectives
