Infection Prevention and Control

Tuberculosis still the deadliest infectious disease among all communicable infections and DRTB remains an evil for low income countries like Pakistan. Irrational use of second line drugs including fluoroquinolones and second line injections along with lack of proper awareness to both level community and treatment provider, less number of diagnostic and treatment centers, poor adherence to treatment, primary default, infection prevention and lack of technical resources in Punjab may lead to rise in incidence of DRTB. To find out treatment outcomes and their associations with type of resistance among DRTB patients in Punjab, retrospective cohort analysis was done. Of the total bacteriologically confirmed DRTB registered patients at various PMDT sites across Punjab, n=2046 patient’s records were analyzed. Bivariate analysis shows a significant positive association (relative risk [RR] 1.7 & p-value = < 0•001) between type of resistance and treatment outcome in DRTB patients. Overall treatment success rate for DRTB in Punjab was 61.14% and favorable outcomes including cured and treatment completed were 59.4% and 1.7% respectively. While the unfavorable treatment outcomes including died, LTFU, not evaluated, treatment failure were 22.3%, 9.7%, 3.5%, and 2.7% respectively. Scale up DRTB surveillance activities, contact screening,

integration of DRTB with other public health programs, active case finding among populations will have a positive impact on drug resistance tuberculosis case notification and control over spread of diseases.