Child Contact Screening and Chemoprophylaxis against Tuberculosis in South Indian Districts-Situation Analysis Ranganath T S1, Hamsa L2,* 1Professor and Head, Department of Community Medicine, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bangalore, Karnataka, India 2Assistant Professor, Department of Community Medicine, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bangalore, Karnataka, India *Corresponding Author: Hamsa Lokanath Assistant Professor, Department of Community Medicine, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bangalore, Karnataka, India Email: drhamsal@gmail.com
Online published on 3 April, 2018. Abstract Background India is a home for one fourth of tuberculosis cases globally. Children living with these cases are always at risk. They should be promptly screened and treated Aims and Objective To assess the extent of child contact screening and Isoniazid Preventive Therapy and determine the factors affecting it. Materials and Methods This was a cross sectional study. Done by house to house visits, patients or head of the family were interviewed after taking informed consent. Number of children <6 yrs in the households, the extent of screening and isoniazid preventive therapy and various factors affecting it were studied. results Totally 110 eligible Contacts of <6years were identified by household visits, 95(86.36%) of contacts were screened for tuberculosis, 71(64.54%) were initiated with isoniazid preventive therapy in which 53(48.18%) of the contacts had incomplete therapy and only 18(16.36%) completed the IPT therapy. Conclusions Implementation of child contact screening and IPT is suboptimal. This component needs to be strengthened to prevent the children becoming the future pool of infections and progression of infection to disease state. Top Keywords Child contacts, screening, Isoniazid Preventive Therapy. Top |