A household survey on screening practices of household contacts of smear positive tuberculosis patients in Vietnam

BMC Public Health

Heiman FL Wertheim²  Frank GJ Cobelens¹  Peter Horby²  Hung Nguyen Van³  Nhung Nguyen Viet³  Sy Dinh Ngoc³  Thuy Hoang Thi Thanh³ 

[1] Department of Global Health and Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands;Nuffield department of clinical medicine, Centre for Tropical Medicine UK, Oxford, UK;National Tuberculosis Control Programme of Vietnam, National Lung Hospital (VNTP-NLH), Hanoi, Vietnam

关键词: Vietnam;    Case finding;    Contact screening;    Tuberculosis;   

Others  :  1129007
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-14-713

 received in 2014-01-14, accepted in 2014-06-26,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Close contacts of tuberculosis (TB) patients are at increased risk of developing tuberculosis. Although passive contact screening guidelines are incorporated in the national TB control program, currently it is unknown how frequent close contacts are screened for TB in Vietnam. This study assesses current contact screening practices in Vietnam and determines the proportion of household contacts screened of newly registered TB patients.

Method

Survey of household contacts of smear-positive TB patients (index patients) registered for treatment in 2008 in three Vietnamese cities. Households were interviewed in 2010 about screening for TB since treatment registration date of the index patient.

Results

We interviewed 4,118 household contacts of 1,091 identified index cases. Contact screening mainly relied on self-referral by household contacts. Of the 4,118 household contacts, 474 (11.5%) self-referred for TB screening, while this screening proportion was only 5.5% among contacts under 5 years old (16/293). Sputum examinations were performed in 374 (78.9%) of the screened contacts. Contact screening identified 27 cases of pulmonary TB (0.7%; or 656 cases/100,000 contacts), of which 20 were detected by sputum smear.

Conclusions

The low proportion of household TB contacts screened for TB illustrates the limitations of passive contact screening as currently practiced in Vietnam. Children under 5 years of age are particularly neglected with this approach. Active contact screening with fixed follow-up times of close contacts of newly diagnosed TB patients should be considered in Vietnam, particularly in case of young children and drug-resistant TB.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Thanh et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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