Extract
Tuberculosis (TB) prevention is an essential component of the End TB Strategy to work towards elimination [1]. Currently, the guidelines of the World Health Organization recommend TB preventive treatment (TPT) in populations at risk for TB [2]. In low TB incidence countries, the foreign born are a population of interest for TB prevention as they constitute >50% of TB patients [3, 4]. Previous studies showed that TB infection (TBI) screening and TPT among specific migrant populations can be organised and executed in practice [5–9], with TPT initiation (23–97%) and completion (7–83%) proportions varying considerably between countries [10]. Identifying factors that contribute to these differences may aid the successful implementation of TPT in high TB risk migrants. We therefore compiled and analysed data from three recent Dutch TBI screening and TPT implementation studies [5–7] among various migrant populations to assess factors facilitating TPT uptake and completion.
Abstract
Verbal education, higher self-perceived severity and risk of tuberculosis (TB), in combination with committed and supportive TB care staff and the use of professional interpreters facilitate high completion TB preventive treatmenthttps://bit.ly/3AugpTs
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank all staff members from the department of tuberculosis control of the Public Health Services for their dedicated work in TB control and care.
Footnotes
This article has an editorial commentary:https://doi.org/10.1183/13993003.00149-2022
Research involving population health screening subjected to licensing as stated in the Population Screening Act (WBO), is not subjected to the Dutch Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (WMO). The Public Health Services, who were responsible for the TBI screening part of involved studies, are licensed under the WBO act to perform screening for tuberculosis, including latent tuberculosis infection (https://english.ccmo.nl/investigators/legal-framework-for-medical-scientific-research/laws/population-screening-act). Consequently, the medical ethical committee of University Medical Centre Amsterdam (UMC-AMC) waived the need for ethical approval of the three implementation studies [5–7] which are part of the larger TB ENDPoint project. We obtained permission of the registration committee of the National TB register (NTR) to collect and analyse data from the NTR database. We followed the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, adopted by the World Medical Association (WMA Declaration of Helsinki 2000).
The data supporting the results of this study are obtained from the TB ENDPoint project. Anonymous data supporting the study results can be made available upon request, and upon approval by the Dutch National Tuberculosis Registration Committee.
Author contributions: In collaboration with the other authors, C. Joren and I. Spruijt wrote the study's plan of analysis. C. Joren performed data management. C. Joren and I. Spruijt conducted statistical analysis and wrote the manuscript. I. Spruijt, C. Erkens and S. van den Hof supervised the statistical analysis. All authors read, commented on, and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict of interest: I. Spruijt has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: C. Joren has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: S. van den Hof has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: C. Erkens has nothing to disclose.
Support statement: This work was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw, grant number 50-53000-98-128,https://www.zonmw.nl/en/). The funder ZonMW had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Funding information for this article has been deposited with theCrossref Funder Registry.
- ReceivedJuly 26, 2021.
- AcceptedSeptember 14, 2021.
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