Relook

At the Tuberculosis Unit (TU), the presiding supervisory team uses a standardized checklist mandated by the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) during their periodic supervisory visits. The report and copies of the checklist may be shared with appropriate authorities within 1 week of completing the supervisory visit.

These appropriate authorities include the Central TB Division, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and respective district and state authorities, who will in turn initiate remedial measures in a timely and appropriate manner.

Once a presumptive TB patient is identified, the patient is enrolled online by a healthcare worker or doctor in Nikshay online portal. For diagnosis of Tuberculosis, the treating physician can request a test utilizing the request test option of Nikshay online portal. The step-by-step approach for test request is as follows:

Step 0: Go to the Patients Page.

Step 1: Select the “Tests” tab.

Step 2: Click the “Add Test” button.

The treatment for TB is demanding in terms of duration of treatment, adverse drug reactions, the requirement of prolonged adherence by patients and catastrophic expenditures. The presence of a special condition added on by a TB diagnosis makes it even more challenging.

To improve the outcomes for such challenging situations, the programme recommends certain modifications in the regimen, which are listed in the table below.

Table: Management of TB in Special Situations

Figure: Nikshay Home Page

After login in Nikshay, using the login credential shared by NTEP Health Staff, Treatment Supporter will be able to access the following button:

The Senior TB Laboratory Supervisor (STLS) is the person responsible for monitoring the day-to-day activities of all the microscopy centres and nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) sites and is thus essential to the success of the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP). They also ensure the quality of TB diagnostic services.

Roles of STLS at the DMC

• TB Infection (or previously known as Latent TB infection) is a stage in between uninfected and having active TB. In this stage the person has no symptoms and can only be identified using laboratory tests.

• The vast majority of infected people may never develop TB disease. However, to achieve TB elimination, it is important to treat TB infection in people at risk of developing active TB disease.

GeneXpert MTB/RIF Assay is also called Cartridge Based Nucleic Acid Technology (CBNAAT).

The Intermediate Reference Laboratories (IRLs) function as a culture and drug susceptibility testing (C&DST) facility for the state level.

In addition to performing CDST, IRL is also responsible for:

TB is a notifiable disease in India, and TB notification has been made mandatory at the point of diagnosis since May 2012. This means that when a case of TB is diagnosed and/or put on treatment it is to be reported to the  NTEP.