An evaluation of innovative community-based approaches and systematic tuberculosis screening to improve tuberculosis case detection in Ebonyi State, Nigeria.

BACKGROUND: National tuberculosis (TB) programmes globally rely heavily on passive case finding for detecting TB in the community as advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO). TB case detection is low in Nigeria despite improvement in TB services and coverage.

METHODS: A retrospective evaluation of an active case-finding intervention utilizing community-based approaches and targeted systematic TB screening in Ebonyi State, Nigeria was done. The analysis was performed using Epi Info.

RESULTS: Using community-based and health-facility-based systematic screening strategies, 218,751 persons were screened, with 19.7% of them being presumptive TB cases. Among these, 23,729 (55.1%) submitted sputum samples for microscopy, and 764 (3.2%) had smear-positive TB. In addition, 683 individuals were diagnosed with other forms of TB using X-ray and clinical evaluation giving a total of 1447 all forms of TB cases. The overall number needed to screen (NNS) to find one person with all forms of TB through the project was 151. The NNS was 53 for general outpatients, 88 through contact tracing, and 110 among HIV-infected persons.

CONCLUSIONS: Active case-finding strategies achieved good yields though early loss to follow-up was high. Active case finding is recommended for integration into national TB control policy and practice.