Challenges of tuberculosis management in high and low prevalence countries in a mobile world

Journal article

This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.In this issue of the PCRJ, Bishara et al. 1 present a case report about the treatment of a pregnant woman with tuberculosis (TB). She had emigrated from a country with a high prevalence of TB to one with a lower prevalence. This presented a challenge to her physicians who were faced with identifying and treating close contacts who were also infected. This Perspective article explores in more depth some of the questions raised by this case report. It discusses the role of primary care physicians in low prevalence countries who can implement evidence-based screening programmes, it discusses effective strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of TB in countries with high TB prevalence, and it presents insights from medical anthropology that can help practitioners overcome the barriers to TB diagnosis, treatment and screening described in the case report

Authors: Griffiths, C; Barne, M; Saxena, P; Yaphe, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
• Journal: Primary care respiratory journal : journal of the General Practice Airways Group
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 106-111
• Publication date: 2014-02-28
• DOI: 10.4104/pcrj.2014.00019
• EISSN: 1475-1534
• ISSN: 1471-4418
• Language: English
• Keywords: Environmental health; Developing country; Medicine; Economic growth; Tuberculosis; Pathology