Achieving Tuberculosis (TB) Control In Zambia

The purpose of this study is to initiate sustained, active health facility and community-based case finding interventions to achieve improved TB case detection in high burden settings (Zambia) and contribute to TB control.

The interventions are expected to increase the impact of Xpert on TB case finding, thus increase TB case detection through scaling up of a combination of community level and facility level TB case finding interventions. The study will generate evidence on the added value of using Chest X-ray (CXR) screening at community level, whilst also comparing the performance of CXR with computer assisted diagnosis (CAD) and C-reactive protein (CRP) and symptoms as screening tools in terms sensitivity, specificity and cost effectiveness. Symptom screen alone has been shown to be suboptimal for screening as it misses a significant percentage of TB due to atypical presentation of TB in HIV-infected populations.

Inclusion criteria

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Program Implementation:

Inclusion criteria

• Any adult or child with TB symptoms (weight loss, chest pain, shortness of breath, fever, cough, hemoptysis, night sweats)
• Ability to produce sputum
• Verbal consent of parent or guardian if < 18 years old

Operations Research:

Inclusion criteria

• Adults (18 years and older)
• TB symptoms (weight loss, chest pain, shortness of breath, fever, cough, hemoptysis, night sweats)
• Ability to provide a sputum sample
• Willing to provide written informed consent
• Willing to undergo full clinical evaluation
• Willing to undergo a CXR