Background
Pulmonary tuberculosis is usually diagnosed when symptomatic individuals seek care at healthcare facilities, and healthcare workers have a minimal role in promoting health-seeking behaviour. However, some policy specialists believe the healthcare system could be more active in tuberculosis diagnosis to increase tuberculosis case detection.
Key findings
- Tuberculosis outreach screening (with and without health promotion) to encourage presumptive tuberculosis patients to attend healthcare services may increase tuberculosis case detection in settings where the prevalence of undiagnosed tuberculosis disease is high.
- Regular tuberculosis diagnostic outreach clinics may increase tuberculosis case detection.
- There is insufficient evidence to determine if sustained improvements in case detection impact on long-term tuberculosis prevalence, as the only controlled study to evaluate this found no effect after four years of contact tracing plus intensive health promotion intervention.
 Evidence Assessment: Interventions to increase tuberculosis case detection | [ ] | 716 kB |
