Saulat Ullah Khan, Shamshad Rasul Awan.
Treating tuberculosis in primary health care. Is there a need for improvement?.
Pak J Chest Med Jan ;9(4):1-2.

Primary health care physicians are most likely to be visited by patients when they fiirst become ill but unfortunately we have to accept that most of our primary health care physicians are not adequately trained to treat TB. Their knowledge and skills in detecting, diagnosing and treating respiratory diseases are poor. There are multiple reasons for this, some are genuine and some are not. Primary health care physicians reported to such criticism by referring to the inadequate resources like time constraints, lack of staff and finance, non-availability of medicines and as well as lack of structured Postgraduate Training programme. The fact remains that general practitioners are important in their community, as they are trusted by patients and can help control TB in their community by ensuring that each and every person with cough for 3 weeks or more has three sputum samples examined in a laboratory. They can be further helpful by emphasizing their patients the critical importance of complete treatment and telling their patients the critical importance of complete treatment and telling their patients that TB will be cured if complete is taken. They should emphasize the importance of screening contacts of smear positive cases and ensure that the symptomatic contacts are evaluated. They should know that sputum microscopy is the basic tool for the diagnosis and monitoring of treatment of TB. They have to play the basic role because every patient whatever the complaints may be goes to the family physicians. Chest Pathology needs to be looked at carefully and our primary care physicians should not label every chest disease as tuberculosis. Anti TB drugs should be prescribed in therapeutic doses for right duration.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com