STANDARDIZED TUBERCULOSIS TREATMENT OUTCOME MONITORING IN EUROPE

Consensus-based recommendations have been developed by a Working Group of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Union Ag ainst Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD) on uniform reporting of t uberculosis (TB) treatment outcome data in countries in Europe, The ma in purpose of treatment monitoring is to find out how many of the pote ntial infectious TB patients notified were declared cured at the end o f treatment. Following the uniform case definitions as defined in 1996 , emphasis is placed on cohort analysis of definite cases of pulmonary TB. The Working Group recommends using a minimal set of six mutually exclusive categories of treatment outcome: cure, treatment completed, failure, death, treatment interrupted, and transfer out. More detailed subsets may be chosen, Treatment outcome is expressed as a percentage of the total number of cases notified. Analysis should be separate fo r new and retreatment cases. Treatment outcome data have to be collect ed at the local level and passed on to regional and national authoriti es on an ongoing basis. Evaluation of treatment results becomes, prefe rably, an inbuilt component of national monitoring of programme perfor mance. Because of the long duration of treatment, it is recommended th at analysis is carried out in the first quarter of the calendar year t hat follows a full year after the last patient was enrolled. Feedback is essential, Treatment outcome results should become an inseparable p art of the annual report on tuberculosis.