Tuberculosis is a major public health problem world-wide and its control continues to elude the brightest minds and to challenge the human and economic resources of countries around the world. Unless urgent action is taken, more than 15 million people including more than 4 million in India will die from tuberculosis in the next decade. Tuberculosis can be cured in nearly all patients. Directly ...

BACKGROUND Costs of tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment may represent a significant burden for the poor and for the health system in resource-poor countries. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to analyze patients' costs of tuberculosis care and to estimate the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of the directly observed treatment (DOT) strategy per completed treatment in Rio de Jan...

INTRODUCTION About one third of the world's population has immunological evidence of previous exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2013, an estimated 9.0 million people developed tuberculosis (TB) and 1.5 million died from the disease. METHODS AND OUTCOMES We conducted a systematic overview, aiming to answer the following clinical questions: What are the effects of directly observed tre...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of different tuberculosis control strategies in Thailand. METHODS Different tuberculosis control strategies, which included health-worker, community-member, and family-member directly observed treatment (DOT) and a mobile phone "contact-reminder" system, were compared with self-administered treatment (SAT). Cost-effectiveness analysis was undertake...

BACKGROUND With evolving evidence of association between tuberculosis (TB) and tobacco smoking, recommendations for the inclusion of tobacco cessation interventions in TB care are becoming increasingly important and more widely disseminated. Connecting TB and tobacco cessation interventions has been strongly advocated as this may yield better outcomes. However, no study has documented the impac...

BACKGROUND Good adherence to treatment is crucial to control tuberculosis (TB). Efficiency and feasibility of directly observed therapy (DOT) under routine program conditions have been questioned. As an alternative, Médecins sans Frontières introduced self-administered therapy (SAT) in several TB programs. We aimed to measure adherence to TB treatment among patients receiving TB chemotherapy wi...