Prevalence of tuberculosis in Faridabad district, Haryana State, India

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Epidemiological information on tuberculosis (TB) has always been vital for planning control strategies. It has now gained further importance for monitoring the impact of interventions to control the disease. The present study was done to estimate the prevalence of bacillary tuberculosis in the district of Faridabad in Haryana State of India among persons aged older than 15 years. METHODS In this cross-sectional study, residents of Faridabad district were assessed for the prevalence of tuberculosis. Twelve rural and 24 urban clusters with estimated populations of 41,106 and 64,827 individuals were selected for the study. Two sputum samples were collected from individuals found eligible for inclusion. The samples were also cultured by modified Petroff's method and were examined for growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis once a week for eight weeks. A person found positive by smear and/or culture was identified as sputum-positive pulmonary TB positive. RESULTS A total of 105,202 subjects were enumerated in various clusters of the Faridabad district. There were 50,057 (47.58%) females and 55,145 (52.42%) males. Of these 98,599 (93.7%) were examined by the study group (47,976 females; 50,623 males). The overall prevalence of sputum smear or culture positive pulmonary tuberculosis in our study was found to be 101.4 per 100,000 population. INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSIONS The present results showed that the prevalence of sputum positive pulmonary tuberculosis was higher in Faridabad district than the notification rates recorded by the World Health Organization for the contemporary period, a disparity that could be explained by a difference in case detection strategy employed for the study.