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Diagnostic services are provided free of cost at all public health laboratories, for patient referrals from the private sector. Laboratory services are also purchased from certified private sector laboratories through partnership schemes.

The Drug-resistant Tuberculosis (DR-TB) care cascade is to be ensured for every patient notified/ referred.  

The figure below showcases the flow of care cascade for a patient seeking care in the private sector.

Figure: Flow of Care Cascade for a Patient Seeking Care in the Private Sector

​Resources

The various provisions under the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP) for Nodal Drug-resistant Tuberculosis Centre (NDR-TBC) ​are:​

Human Resource​

NTEP provides remuneration to Senior Medical Officers (SMO), Statistical Assistants (SA) and counsellors, which may be made available for the NDR-TBC once it is approved in the Program Implementation Plans (PIP).

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Capacity Building​

Every state needs to establish the State Programmatic Management of Drug-resistant Tuberculosis (PMDT) Committee. 

The functions and structure of the State PMDT Committee are listed below.

Functions

To prevent false negative results during smear microscopy, each laboratory technician needs to:

False positive results can be prevented by using the following measures:

Each Designated Microscopic Center (DMC) needs to maintain a National TB Elimination Program TB (NTEP) Laboratory Register which collects information of all presumptive TB patients who undergo tests or confirmed patients who undergo follow-up tests.

Different grades of Acid-fast Bacillus (AFB) smear microscopy and its results are as follows:

Tuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis which is a unique acid-fast gram-positive bacterium.

It is unique because of the high lipid and mycolic acid content of its cell wall. It neither contains the phospholipid outer membrane, nor retains the dye. 

Acid-fast Bacilli (AFB) Microscopy identifies tubercule bacilli and hence is used under National TB Elimination Program (NTEP) for:

All healthcare workers need to take the following precautions while undertaking the TB diagnostic specimen collection, transportation and receipt of samples as TB is an airborne infection: