Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Commentary | OPEN ACCESS

Engaging Community Pharmacists and Alternative Practitioners: An Approach to Active Case Finding of Tuberculosis in Malaysia

Muhammad Atif¹ , Syed Azhar Syed Sulaiman¹, Asrul Akmal Shafie², Muhammad Asif³, Shazia Qasim Jamshed⁴

¹Discipline of Clinical Pharmacy; ²Discipline of Social and Administrative Pharmacy; ³Department of Pharmacology, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Minden, Penang; ⁴School of Pharmacy, International Islamic University, Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia.

For correspondence:- Muhammad Atif Email: pharmacistatif@yahoo.com Tel:+60147572474

Received: 4 December 2012 Accepted: 8 November 2013 Published: 24 December 2013

Citation: Atif M, Sulaiman SA, Shafie AA, Asif M, Jamshed SQ. Engaging Community Pharmacists and Alternative Practitioners: An Approach to Active Case Finding of Tuberculosis in Malaysia. Trop J Pharm Res 2013; 12(6):1093-1095 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v12i6.34

© 2013 The authors.
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Abstract

Contact tracing is the most commonly employed process of identifying the relevant contacts of a person with an infectious disease. A systematic review and meta-analysis on contact tracing of tuberculosis (TB) suspects has shown that the yield of household contact investigation in low- and middle-income countries was 6.5 %. However, a recent study from Malaysia has shown the yield of TB contact tracing as low as 0.49 %. Engaging community pharmacists and alternative practitioners in tracing TB suspects in Malaysia is context-specific and can significantly decrease transmission and incidence of the disease.

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