WHO operational handbook on tuberculosis: module 2: screening: systematic screening for tuberculosis disease

Overview

Background

Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, despite being largely curable and preventable. In 2019 an estimated 2.9 million of the 10 million people who fell ill with TB were not diagnosed or reported to the World Health Organization. The Political Declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2018 commits, amongst others, to diagnosing and treating 40 million people with TB by 2022. In order to achieve this ambitious target, there is an urgent need to deploy strategies to improve diagnosis and initiation of care for people with TB. One of them is systematic screening for TB disease, which is included in the End TB Strategy as a central component of its first pillar to ensure early diagnosis for all with TB.

The WHO operational handbook on tuberculosis. Module 2: Screening - Systematic screening for tuberculosis disease is the companion, implementation guide to the 2021 WHO guidelines on TB screening.[1] This handbook is part of a modular series of practical guides meant for the implementers of various aspects of the programmatic management TB.

Overview

The handbook provides practical advice on how to put in place the WHO recommendations at the scale needed to achieve national and global impact. It is intended for personnel in national TB programmes and national HIV/AIDS programmes, or their equivalents, and other relevant national health programmes in ministries of health; other relevant ministries working in public health and screening; other health policy-makers, implementing partners including technical and funding agencies, civil society and representatives of affected communities, clinicians and public health practitioners working on TB and HIV and infectious diseases in the public and private sectors. The handbook aims to support policymakers and health professionals to choose the best approach to planning and implementing screening and active TB case-finding, depending on the context. It provides a sound basis for development or updating of national guidelines for TB screening according to the epidemiology of TB in different risk groups and the health care delivery system in the country. This will contribute to finding people with TB who may be missed by passive TB case detection and finding people with TB earlier in the course of disease to reduce transmission, morbidity, mortality and financial hardship.