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Dr KK Aggarwal 22 March 2019
Contact screening is an important strategy for control of tuberculosis (TB). Contacts are persons who are in close proximity to patients who have TB and are therefore at high risk of acquiring the infection.
Simply put, a close contact is an individual who shared an enclosed space with a TB index case for 4 hours or more per week. This includes those living in the same household or frequent visitors to the house or contacts at work or school.
Casual contact is defined as individuals with less than 4 hours of contact per week. This may include health care workers and/or contacts at work or school.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends contact investigation for household and close contacts when the index case has any of the following characteristics:
If the first test is negative, close contacts of patients with active pulmonary TB should undergo a second test eight weeks later.
Casual contacts of smear-negative patients are usually not evaluated unless they are immunocompromised.
Contact tracing interrupts the chain of transmission of the disease by early detection and timely and complete treatment. This reduces further transmission of the TB bacilli to others in the community. Detection of latent TB infection and its treatment prevents new “active” cases of TB.
Hence, all household and close contacts of patients with infectious TB should be traced, screened and treated with a full course of ATT if found to have TB.
Since TB is a notifiable disease, every case of TB has to be notified at nikshay.gov.in.
Dr KK Aggarwal
Padma Shri Awardee
President Elect Confederation of Medical Associations in Asia and Oceania (CMAAO)
Group Editor-in-Chief IJCP Publications
President Heart Care Foundation of India
Past National President IMA
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