Isoniazid Preventive Therapy among Children Living with Tuberculosis Patients: Is It Working? A Mixed-Method Study from Bhopal, India.

"FUNDING This work was supported by the Department for International Development (DFID), UK, The Union, MSF and La Fondation Veuve Emile Metz-Tesch (Luxembourg). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. In accordance with WHO’s open-access publication policy for all work funded by WHO or authored/co-authored by WHO staff members, the WHO retains the copyright of this publication through a Creative Commons Attribution IGO licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/legalcode), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Box 1:Operational definitions used in the study of the IPT of child contacts of TB patients in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, 2015–16ParameterDefinitionSp-TBA patient with at least one positive sputum specimen for AFB of the two sputum specimens subjected for smear examination by direct microscopy.IPTShort course of Isoniazid monotherapy with 10 mg/kg body weight given prophylactically for all the household paediatric contacts (aged <6 years) of a sputum positive TB case. IPT is given daily for 6 months on self-administered basis.Child contactAll the children aged ≤6 years who are in contact with smear-positive pulmonary TB case, who live or have lived (irrespective of the duration) within the household of the smear-positive PTB patient during the course of his/her disease (after the onset of symptoms)Index TB patientSmear-positive TB patient, perceived to be source of infection in household contactInitiation of IPTFor the study purpose, the child contacts started on IPT within 1 month after the diagnosis of index TB case is considered initiated otherwise not.Completion of IPTCompletion of full course of IPT within 7 months from the date of initiation.Note. AFB, Acid-Fast Bacillus; PTB, Pulmonary Tuberculosis."