PLOS Global Public Health (Jan 2024)

Insights into tuberculosis burden in Karachi, Pakistan: A concurrent adult tuberculosis prevalence and child Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection survey.

  • Palwasha Y Khan,
  • Mohammed Shariq Paracha,
  • Chris Grundy,
  • Falak Madhani,
  • Saadia Saeed,
  • Lamis Maniar,
  • Maqboola Dojki,
  • Liesl Page-Shipp,
  • Nazia Khursheed,
  • Waleed Rabbani,
  • Najam Riaz,
  • Saira Khowaja,
  • Owais Hussain,
  • Rabia Maniar,
  • Uzma Khan,
  • Salman Khan,
  • Syed S H Kazmi,
  • Ali A Dahri,
  • Abdul Ghafoor,
  • Sabira Tahseen,
  • Ali Habib,
  • James J Lewis,
  • Katharina Kranzer,
  • Rashida A Ferrand,
  • Katherine L Fielding,
  • Aamir J Khan

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0002155
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 8
p. e0002155

Abstract

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Pakistan is one of the five highest tuberculosis burden countries globally. We estimated prevalence of adult bacteriologically confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis and annual risk of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) infection in children aged 2-4 years in Karachi, Pakistan. The survey design enabled exploration of tuberculosis burden by whether the population had previously been exposed to widespread tuberculosis active case-finding (ACF) activities or not. We conducted a concurrent adult pulmonary tuberculosis prevalence survey and a child M. tuberculosis infection survey using interferon gamma release assays in four districts (Korangi, South, West and Central). A cluster-based unequal probability random sampling method was employed with the a priori plan to oversample Korangi district which had been the focus of tuberculosis ACF activities since 2011. We defined Korangi district as the 'prior ACF' zone and remaining districts as the 'no prior ACF' zone. Between March 2018 and May 2019, 34,962 adults (78·5% of those eligible) and 1,505 children (59·9%) participated. Overall estimated prevalence of bacteriologically confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis was 387 cases per 100,000 population (95% CI 276-498) with a prevalence of 421 cases [95% CI 276-567] per 100,000 in the 'no prior ACF' and 279 cases [95% CI 155-403] per 100,000 in the 'prior ACF' zone. We estimated the annual risk of M. tuberculosis infection in children to be 1·1% (95% CI 0·7-1·5) in the 'no prior ACF' zone and 0·6% (95% CI 0·3-1·1) in the 'prior ACF' zone. We observed consistent differences in the population distribution of tuberculosis between the 'prior ACF' and 'no prior' ACF zones with a trend towards lower estimates of burden and M. tuberculosis transmission in the 'prior ACF' zone. A plausible explanation is that intensive ACF activities that have been ongoing in Korangi district for the preceding years have noticeably reduced the burden of tuberculosis and transmission.