Background: Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) sponsored Public Private Partnership (PPP) is undermined by poor participation by private practitioners (PPs).There is an urgent need to realizefactors influencing private practitioners’ preference of directly observed treatment short course (DOTS) for their patients. We attempted to study the knowledge and current practice chara...

BACKGROUND India's Revised National Tuberculosis (TB) Control Programme (RNTCP) offers free TB diagnosis and treatment. But more than 50% of TB patients seek care from private practitioners (PPs), where TB is managed sub-optimally. In India, there is dearth of studies capturing experiences of TB patients when they navigate through health facilities to seek care. Also, there is less information ...

BACKGROUND Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) was found successful in achieving its objectives; still there is concern of relapse cases and defaulters. AIM The aim of this study is to know the treatment outcome, to assess the reasons for relapse, default, death of patient and to assess the follow-up status of tuberculosis (TB) patients put on directly observed treatment sho...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The past decade has seen a rapid expansion of directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS) centers throughout India, under the guidance of the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP). While expansion has been rapid and extensive, few reports exist detailing individual DOTS centers' experiences, their challenges, and their successes. We present a bri...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES In the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) in India prior to 2005, TB patients were offered standard DOTS regimens without knowledge of HIV status. Consequently such patients did not receive anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and the influence of concomitant HIV infection on the outcome of anti-tuberculosis treatment remained undetermined. This study was c...

INTRODUCTION With the creation of the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP), tuberculosis services have become decentralized and more accessible. A 1997 study prior to RNTCP implementation reported that most chest symptomatics accessed first private health care facilities and a general dissatisfaction with government health facilities. The study was repeated post-RNTCP implementation to...

BACKGROUND Private Practitioners (PP) are the primary source of health care for patients in India. Limited representative information is available on TB management practices of Indian PP or on the efficacy of India's Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) to improve the quality of TB management through training of PP. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional survey of a systema...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The dual epidemic of HIV and tuberculosis is a cause for concern in those countries where these two infections are prevalent in epidemic proportions. We undertook a survey at two sites in North Arcot district of Tamil Nadu in 1992-1993, to know the seroprevalence of HIV infection among tuberculosis patients. The objective of this study was to re-examine the prevalence of...