Contact tracing: A strategy to augment tuberculosis case detection

Abstract

Sir,

The World Health Organization has acknowledged that tuberculosis (TB) is one of the deadliest infectious diseases worldwide.[1] The global estimates suggest that in the year 2013, almost 9 million people were diagnosed with TB and around 1.5 million succumbed to the disease and its associated complications.[1] As an effective approach [viz. Directly Observed Treatment and Short‑course chemotherapy (DOTS)] is available for the disease, it is really unacceptable to digest that so many people die every year because of a preventable disease.[1,2] ........