KARACHI: TB termed challenge for health care providers
KARACHI, March 22: Since more people die of tuberculosis than from any other curable infectious disease across the globe, it becomes a major challenge for health care providers.
This was observed at a seminar organized by the Pakistan Chest Society in coordination with Pulmonology Unit of Sindh Government Hospital, Korangi-5, here on Tuesday to commemorate the World TB Day, observed on March 24 every year. The theme for this year is “Frontline care providers in the fight against tuberculosis”.
Senior experts discussing the role played by national tuberculosis control programme in implementing DOTS strategy for the control of tuberculosis referred to the situations where tuberculosis was being wrongly diagnosed and managed.
Pakistan Chest Society, Sindh president Dr Nadeem Rizvi, who is also head of the chest medicine department of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, brought into light such cases before the audience mainly comprising general medical practitioners and provided them guidelines as how to handle such cases besides making proper and timely diagnosis of TB patients.
Dr Shakeel Ahmed Siddiqui, PCS provincial secretary and chest physician working at Sindh Government Hospital Korangi-5, mentioned that the theme of World TB Day 2005 had tremendous relevance to Pakistan as it focused on TB care providers and treatment supporter.
He said that counselling and health education should be provided to health staff, patients and relatives. He urged the family physicians to play role in educating the masses regarding the importance of early presentation at a health care facility - particularly of those registering chest symptoms especially cough for more than three weeks.
Dr Shahina Qayyum of JPMC, in her presentation on the management of tuberculosis, highlighted the importance of standardized combination and said that the patients could develop multi-drug resistant tuberculosis if standardized combination was ignored. The key factor in management of tuberculosis was correct prescription and absolute compliance on part of patients, she said.
According to her, tuberculosis is a high-prevalence disease for which almost every doctor in every speciality is bound to see the patient of tuberculosis. Therefore, it is very important that every doctor should familiarize himself or herself with the new approaches in the management of tuberculosis.
Dr Mohammed Hussain of Liaquat National Hospital spoke on diagnosis of tuberculosis. He said that new techniques were being developed for the diagnosis of tuberculosis but none had proven to be cost-effective. “For sputum smear examination, minimum three specimens are required and thus generally unaffordable for the working class,” he added. Emphasis should be given to improve the quality of laboratory services so that their results could be trusted on, he added.
Dr Ghazala Ansari called upon the doctors that they should suspect tuberculosis in every patient reporting with unexplained cough, persistent for three weeks. She said that the TB patients should continue their due course of medicines even during pregnancy and breast feeding.
The presentations were followed by panel discussion.—APP
