03 Nov Tailor-made TB screening strategies

Current tests for tuberculosis (TB) are less than ideal for screening. A more active approach to find infectious cases is urgently needed if tuberculosis is to be eliminated. Resources are scarce in countries where TB is most common and must be used efficiently.

Dr. Anja van ‘t Hoog, a researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development and the Academic Medical Center (AMC) Department of Global Health, University of Amsterdam, developed a model to help TB control programs to choose the most suitable screening test strategy to suit their own TB infection setting. This work informed the development of a World Heatlh Organisation Guideline on ‘Systematic screening for active tuberculosis’ that was recently nominated for the 2014 British Medical Association Book Award. The Award Committee praised it as “…an excellent example of evidence based policy making (…) recommended to all those interested in health policy or communicable disease control”.

Anja van’t Hoog served as a member of the Guideline Development Group. For this group, she also conducted a systematic literature review on the accuracy of screening methods, in collaboration with AMC Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics and the KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation.

View the article: Choosing algorithms for TB screening: a modelling study to compare yield, predictive value and diagnostic burden