Tuberculosis Contact-Tracing Among Syrian Refugee Populations: Lessons from Jordan

Author(s)
Hosten, E. et al.
Publication language
English
Pages
10pp
Date published
16 Jul 2018
Publisher
Conflict and Health
Type
Articles
Keywords
Epidemics & pandemics, Health, Forced displacement and migration
Countries
Syria, Jordan
Link
https://conflictandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13031-018-0164-y

In response to the influx of displaced Syrians since 2011, the Jordanian National Tuberculosis Program (NTP) implemented a specific Tuberculosis (TB) reduction strategy, including contact-tracing (CT). Contacts of all refugees diagnosed with pulmonary TB (PTB) were registered by the International Organization for Migration and screened for active & latent TB infection (LTBI) in 6 NTP centres.

The objectives of this study were to assess prevalence of active TB and LTBI, risk factors for LTBI as well as program performance.

Methods: We performed a retrospective study among contacts (N = 481) of all PTB cases diagnosed between March 2011 and May 2014 (N = 76). CT was performed using verbal screening of TB-related symptoms, tuberculin skin test (TST) and chest X-ray.