Organisation of a tuberculosis prevalence survey.
Measuring tuberculosis (TB) prevalence trends provides information on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. The World Health Organization recently published guidelines on assessing TB prevalence through population-based surveys. The current manuscript describes in detail the organisation of the field activities in such a survey. These activities need to be embedded in a strong organisational framework where the steering committee has the overall responsibility and the survey coordinator the day-to-day supervision. Field activities need to be tailored to the community, with respect to both time and place and direct involvement of community members. Frequent and well-described monitoring procedures need to be in place to be able to identify systematic and non-systematic errors at the earliest opportunity.
van Leth
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KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, The Hague, The Netherlands. vanlethf@kncvtbc.nl
Cobelens
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Onozaki
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D003256:Community Participation; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods*; D006282:Health Personnel; D006801:Humans; D015995:Prevalence; D014376:Tuberculosis / Q000453:epidemiology*