High prevalence of tuberculosis diagnosed during autopsy examination at Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The primary aims of tuberculosis (TB) control programmes is early diagnosis and prompt treatment of infectious cases to limit transmission. Failure to diagnose and adequately treat TB could lead to premature death and unrecognized transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The proportion of missed TB cases has not been reported in Tanzania.

Are sputum samples of retreatment tuberculosis reaching the reference laboratories? A 9-year audit in Tanzania.

Setting: One reference and three zonal laboratories and 500 health facilities managing retreatment tuberculosis (TB) patients in Tanzania.

Objectives: The National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Programme (NTLP) requires that all notified cases of retreatment TB in Tanzania have sputum samples sent for culture and drug susceptibility testing (DST). This study determined 1) if the number of annually notified retreatment patients corresponded to the number of sputum samples received by the reference laboratories, and 2) the number of culture-positive samples and the number of cases undergoing DST.

Pouched rats' detection of tuberculosis in human sputum: comparison to culturing and polymerase chain reaction.

Setting. Tanzania. Objective.

p24 antigen detection on dried blood spots is a feasible and reliable test for infant HIV infection in rural Tanzania.

The difficulty of diagnosing HIV in infants is a major obstacle to early antiretroviral therapy (ART) in resource-limited settings. As serological tests are unreliable during the first 18 months of life, and the cost and complexity of polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based assays limit their access in resource-limited settings, p24 antigen detection has emerged as an alternative diagnostic tool. In this study, the performance of an ultrasensitive p24 antigen assay on dried blood spots was evaluated under field conditions in rural Tanzania.

Using giant African pouched rats to detect tuberculosis in human sputum samples: 2010 findings.

Giant African pouched rats previously have detected tuberculosis (TB) in human sputum samples in which the presence of TB was not initially detected by smear microscopy. Operant conditioning principles were used to train these rats to indicate TB-positive samples. In 2010, rats trained in this way evaluated 26,665 sputum samples from 12,329 patients.