The CATCH TB Cases Project
Project's accomplishments as of March 2012
As of March 2012, the accomplishments of the CATCH TB project are as follows:
Hospital engagement
- Implementing guidelines on hospital TB DOTS and various tools have been developed.
- Enhancing TB with the establishment or upgrading of TB clinics manned by trained hospital TB teams. Medical technologists were also trained to provide quality-assured sputum microscopy. TB Diagnostic Committees that review smear negative TB cases have been organized.
- 17 hospitals detected, managed and successfully referred 10 145 TB cases. Of these cases, 14% are children. Ten percent had extrapulmonary TB.
Household contact investigation
- Around 26 000 household contacts of 9,831 TB cases registered by the 87 health centers were investigated by health center staffs. Of these household contacts, 600 TB cases were detected and given free treatment. Majority of these cases are children less than 15 years old.
High risk group screening
- Communities in the urban poor areas participated in identifying and referring TB suspects to the health centres, who received free diagnostic test.
- About 200 diabetics were screened for TB in four hospitals, namely the Philippine General Hospital, Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center, Amang Rodriguez Medical Center and East Avenue Medical Center.
