Prevalence of Tuberculosis in a Prison in Tehran by Active Case Finding

Tuberculosis [TB] is one of the most important infectious diseases among prisoners. TB Screening plays an important role in prevention among prisoners and their visitors, also better caring of the patients. Active case finding is one of screening methods that is relatively an easy one to find TB suspected prisoners. Therefore, we aimed to assess the prevalence of TB in male prisoners in Tehran, Iran.

This study was conducted among male prisoners in Great Tehran Prison to screen and diagnose TB patients from October 2013 to May 2014. We used active case finding [ACF] as a screening method to find TB suspected prisoners in which healthcare staff explained TB symptoms for prisoners and individuals with those symptoms referred to the clinic for further work up (sputum sample tests).

In total of 6900 prisoners, 448 (6.5%) prisoners were TB suspected by ACF and only nine patients were diagnosed with tuberculosis, indicating the prevalence of 0.13%.

The relatively low TB prevalence within prisoners besides considering likely common symptoms in ACF may result in many false positive cases during screening (6.5% vs. 0.13%). But, ACF is more fast, easy and affordable method to find TB suspected prisoners. Also, during this active method, prisoners are trained about TB symptoms so, it has a more prolonged effect towards screening goals.