International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | August 2021 | Vol 8 | Issue 8 Page 3864 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Sinha AK et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2021 Aug;8(8):3864-3870 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Systematic screening of pulmonary tuberculosis among HIV high risk groups in two districts of Chhattisgarh: a feasibility study Ashish Kumar Sinha 1 *, Sumeet Tripathi 2 , Kshitij Khaparde 3 , Avinash Chaturvedi 4 , Swapnil Vasant Shinkar 1 INTRODUCTION Tuberculosis is one of the most ancient diseases caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis discovered by Sir Robert Koch. 1 Acquisition of infection can be prevented by effective chemotherapy by 90% within 48 hrs. 2 India accounts for about a quarter of the global TB burden. Worldwide India is the country with the highest burden of both TB and MDR TB. 3 There are an estimated 79,000 multi-drug resistant TB patients among the notified cases of pulmonary TB each year. India is also the country with the second highest number (after South Africa) of estimated HIV associated TB cases. In 2016 an estimated 28 lakh cases occurred and 4.5 lakh people died due to TB. 3 The estimated mortality due to TB is 480,000 (CI: 380000-590,000) and varies across different parts in the country depending upon background HIV prevalence in the general population. Approximately 5% of the incident. 4 ABSTRACT Background: HIV is an important risk factor for the development of tuberculosis. People living with HIV are 21-34 times more likely to develop TB than their uninfected counterparts. Efficient approach for detecting more cases along with shortened duration of infectivity involves a systematic screening of pulmonary TB in settings where high risk groups are concentrated even before the diagnosis HIV infection. Lack of proper screening strategy for HRGs might result in their exclusion from timely intervention which may prove lethal without treatment. Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out in two districts of Chhattisgarh during September-December 2019.Training cum sensitization sessions were conducted for peer educators, outreach workers, counselors and project managers prior to the survey and were trained for systematic screening of pulmonary TB, sputum collection and transportation to GeneXpert®MTB/RIF lab and other relevant data collection for pulmonary TB diagnosis. Results: A total of 3963 HRGs were intended to be included in the study, 3418 were screened with 86.2% compliance rate. Out of all HRGs screened (3418), 81 (2.4%) were found presumptive pulmonary TB, of them 2 (0.05%) were microbiologically confirmed, 5 cases were found with incomplete treatment (all were IDUs). Prevalence of tobacco use, alcohol use, diabetes and hypertension were observed in 5.3% and 7.2%, 1.2% and 1.1 respectively. Conclusions: Although yield for pulmonary TB in this study was not much, the study has demonstrated that active case finding for accessing such a hidden population through existing manpower can assure better acceptability and feasibility in resource poor settings. Keywords: HIV, High risk group, Systematic screening, Pulmonary TB, GeneXpert®MTB/RIF, ICF 1 Department of Community Medicine, Pt. JNM Medical College, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India 2 Department of Physiology, Pt. JNM Medical College, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India 3 World Health Organization, Country Office for India, New Delhi, India 4 District Tuberculosis Office, Government of Chhattisgarh, Chhattisgarh, India Received: 19 May 2021 Accepted: 14 June 2021 *Correspondence: Ashish Kumar Sinha, E-mail: ashishsinha.md@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20213014