Profile of the tuberculosis patients enrolled in Nikshay portal (a web-based online portal) from Chittoor district: A monitoring tool for tuberculosis in India

Abstract

Background: The Revised National TB Control Programme developed a case based web-based online reporting mechanism called NIKSHAY. A community-based survey conducted in 2011 reported that 46% of the tuberculosis (TB) patients in India were treated outside the public health system (private sector) and hence they are not the part of the national TB notification system. Methodology: The objective of the study was to assess the profile of the TB individuals in the Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh, south India. A secondary data were retrieved from the district TB center NIKSHAY web-based online portal in Chittoor and analyzed using SPSS 21.0 version. Data were taken from the last 1 year (April 2017 to March 2018). Results: A total of 3952 individuals were registered in the web based online NIKSHAY portal during the study. Among them in 2918 (73.7%) were males and 1033 (26.2%) were females with the mean age of the patients was 44.6 years with a standard deviation of ± 16.3 ranges. The clinically confirmed cases were 587 patients and microbiologically positive were 2495 (79.8%) and negative were 633 (20.2%). Majority 3263 (82.5%) were had pulmonary and 452 (11.4%) had extra-pulmonary TB. Depending on the HIV-positive cases were 274 (6.9%) and 3560 (90.2%) were negative and the remaining 118 (2.9%) do not know the status of the HIV/AIDS. The CBNAAT results were 411 (10.5%) of the patients had rifampicin sensitivity and 26 (0.6%) of them were resistant. Conclusion: India had taken the nice initiative for the web-based online portal for the notification of the TB patients. Several ongoing efforts have been implemented to improve the quality of surveillance reporting. A series of trainings on quality assurance of TB data should be taken to all the field staff.