كاهش موارد ابتلا به سل در يكي از اردوگاههاي مهاجران در سمنان: اتخاذ پروتكل توصيه شده توسط سازمان بهداشت جهاني

Prevalence and Declining Incidence of Tuberculosis in a Refugee Camp in Semnan, Iran

Background and Objectives: Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death among communicable diseases, killing 2-3 million people each year. WHO introduced directly observed short course therapy as the global TB control strategy. In general, refugees suffer from high rates of infections especially with TB. Iran has high number of refugees especially from Afghanistan. In 1997 health authority introduced this protocol to all countries and refugee camps. This study was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of the preventive program based on new protocol in controlling TB in an Afghan camp in Iran. Materials and methods:The first study was conducted in 1996 (before implementation of preventive strategy) as active case finding. Another study was carried out in 2004 for evaluation of the efficacy of preventive strategy of World Health Organization. Results:At the beginning of the study 8 cases were smear positive and 8 were negative that 3(17.8%) of them were male and the others 13(81.2%) were female. During implementation of preventive strategy, the number of TB cases decreased significantly. In the second study no pulmonary TB was detected. Conclusion: Our results showed that preventive strategy introduced by WHO can decreases TB in refugees.