Globally speaking, tuberculosis is a prevalent illness. It is more prevalent in low-income countries and frequently linked to living conditions that are related to poverty. The disease is uncommon in Germany, where there are 4.7 new cases per 100,000 people. The majority of Germans with tuberculosis were born in nations with high rates of the disease.
Therefore, some nations check newly arrived people for tuberculosis risk. Whether or not there should be follow-up screenings and how they should be designed, a group of international scientists led by Professor Dr. Kayvan Bozorgmehr from Bielefeld have looked into this question. The research was released in PlosMedicine, a journal for medicine.
Because of this, some nations conduct additional follow-up screenings, or repeat screening procedures for people who have not yet been given a tuberculosis diagnosis but may be thought to be at risk of contracting it in the future.
It has long been known that these follow-up screenings are effective. However, there hasn’t been any study done on how to design programs and how that might affect their effectiveness up until now. According to Dr. Katharina Wahedi, the study’s lead author, “We examined the characteristics of various programs around the world and compared them in terms of participation rates and yield.” In particular, “We examined whether mandatory programs have advantages over voluntary ones, and what added value multiple follow-up examinations have compared to a single follow up.”
Our study shows that mandatory programs for post-entry tuberculosis screening can lead to a higher participation rate in some cases, but do not deliver better results in terms of case finding’ is how Bozorgmehr summarizes the central findings of the study. The epidemiologist judges voluntary programs to be not only just as effective but also ethically and legally more justifiable because the persons to be screened are considered healthy at the time of follow-up. Moreover, according to Bozorgmehr, multiple follow-up screenings do not seem to achieve significantly better yields than just a single follow-up screening.
