Home > Food Security and Healthcare > Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Misleading serology tests for tuberculosis could be worsening the epidemic in some high burden countries. WHO will be issuing policy advice against their use early in 2011.

Although no international guideline recommends their use, scores of commercial for tuberculosis are being sold in high burden countries. Some are laboratory based tests while others are rapid dip-stick tests, which could fill a vital niche for a point-of-care tuberculosis diagnostic test. Madhukar Pai, co-chair of Stop-TB Partnership’s new diagnostic’s working group comments ‘ If they worked, the problem of a gap in the pipeline for a point of care assay would have been solved decades ago. The pity is they don’t work, in fact they are inaccurate and useless.’

The problem is probably greatest in India where sero-diagnostic kits are used on 1.5 million people with suspected TB each year. Such testing is not done through the Revised National TB Control Programme but through the unregulated private sector. India has more than 2 million new cases each year, on-going transmission will not be reduced without early detection which relies on accurate diagnosis.

The control and eradication of TB is further complicated by the emergence of Multidrug-resistant [MDR] and Extensively Drug resistant [XDR] tuberculosis during the past decade. A commitment to tuberculosis control including improvements in national policies and health systems is needed. The susceptibility of HIV positive individuals to TB and the importance of contact tracing of infected persons must be recognised and pursued vigorously.