Systematic Screening for Active Tuberculosis: An Operational Guide

More than one third of the 9 million people who fall ill with tuberculosis (TB) each year are not diagnosed, not notified, or do not start treatment. Many of those who do start treatment have a delayed start due to a range of challenges. Such obstacles to receive care can result in poor health outcomes for the affected individuals, catastrophic costs for their families and continued transmission of TB to others in their communities.

The WHO has published guidelines that set out the principles for screening for active TB and provide recommendations on prioritizing of risk groups and choosing a screening approach. Screening should not be done on a mass, indiscriminate scale because this is expensive, of relatively low benefit and can result in many false positive results. One of the key principles set out in the guidelines is that screening for TB needs to be properly targeted to high-risk groups and tailored to each specific situation, depending on the epidemiological, social and health-systems contexts.