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Vellore selected for pilot study on tuberculosis control programme

VELLORE: Vellore district is one of the three districts/States selected for a pilot study on the evaluation and demonstration of newer diagnostic methods for tuberculosis in the country under the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP), which is coordinated by the Central TB Division. The study is sponsored by the Foundation for the Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), Geneva. The other two study areas selected are Delhi State and Agra district.

According to Raja Sivanandam, Deputy Director of Medical Services (TB), Vellore district was selected for the evaluation of a special technique of sputum microscopy called LED (light emitting diode) Fluorescent Microscopy, based on increased detection of TB cases. The study would pilot the use of Carl Zeiss Primostar LED fluorescent microscopy, which was superior to conventional fluorescence microscopes, in that they contained a LED that lasts for 50,000 hours as against the conventional ones, which employed halogen bulbs with a lifespan of only 250 hours. The LED fluorescent microscopes could be operated with a battery and do not need a dark room or air-conditioning. The study proposed to prove that fluorescence microscopy was 10 to 15 per cent more sensitive than direct smear microscopy, which was currently employed in all RNTCP centres for case detection. The Deputy Director said that three designated microscopy centres (DMCs) had been selected for the pilot study in Vellore district. They were the District TB Centre, Vellore, the DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Short Course) Clinic in the Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, and the Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs (RUHSA), a community outreach centre of the CMC located in K.V. Kuppam about 25 km from Vellore. The study would be supervised by the Department of Microbiology, CMC. If the results of the study were encouraging, the RNTCP might use the evidence generated from the study to effect policy changes in the national TB Programme so that fluorescence microscopy was routinely used, instead of direct microscopy, he said.

The fluorescent microscope required for the study was installed at the Department of Microbiology, CMC, in the presence of Yamuna Mundale, Coordinator of the project on Thursday. K.R. John, Professor of Community Medicine and the medical officer in charge of the RNTCP in CMC and Joy Sarojini Michael, Associate Professor of Microbiology, were the co-investigators for the study.

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