Tuberculosis is an infectious disease, and an untreated person can infect approximately from 10 up to 15 persons within a year. Available medication today allows the treatment of even the advanced stages of this disease but still the most important is its earliest detection when the lungs are only slightly damaged.
The treatment of tuberculosis is free of charge and obligatory. Additionally, the Tuberculosis Prevention Programme is being carried out.
Who can benefit from this programme?
The Programme is addressed to adults who have not been yet diagnosed with tuberculosis and who have had direct contact with patients with tuberculosis, or their difficult living conditions might significantly affect the prevalence of the disease. This is about people with disabilities, burdened with long-lasting disease, alcohol problems, drug addiction, homeless people, and the long-term unemployed.
This is a result of the fact that tuberculosis is classified as a social disease, therefore related to welfare issues (accommodation, nourishment), work and leisure. The cause of the development of the disease in the infected is the weakening of the strength of the body.
Some internal factors, conductive to the development of tuberculosis, are HIV infection, diabetes, neoplastic diseases, and blood diseases.
The Prevention Programme is being conducted by primary-healthcare nurses. You can join the programme by reporting to the nurse’s office at the primary-healthcare institution.
What does this programme consist of?
Firstly, the nurse conducts a questionnaire which should give the answer whether the person is infected with pulmonary tuberculosis. The questionnaire is confidential, and the questions concern, among other things, possible potential contact with patients with tuberculosis, housing, exposure to asbestos, soot, tar, exhaust and rubber materials, diabetes, chronic renal failure, nourishment, blood diseases, smoking, alcohol abuse, drug addiction, and taking medications that reduce the strength of the immune system (immunosuppressants, steroids).
If, on the basis of the given answers, the increased risk of the patient falling ill is established, the patient is referred to a primary-healthcare doctor, and then, should the need arise, he or she is referred for further diagnostic tests and presumptive treatment at the Tuberculosis and Lung Disease Unit.
If, on the basis of the examination, the patient is not allocated to a group needing further diagnosis, or is not diagnosed with tuberculosis, a renewed examination for tuberculosis included in the programme is conducted 24 months after the previous examination.
How do you make use of this programme?
Free Tuberculosis Prevention Examinations can be conducted in every healthcare centre which has signed a contract with the National Health Fund (NFZ) for providing primary health services. A referral is not required.
The Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases Institute warns that the beginning of tuberculosis is very often hard to diagnose. If it turns out that we struggle with a cough that lasts for at least three weeks, expectorate, have no appetite, lose weight, sweat at night, have subfebrile temperatures, general weakness and easily lose strength, breathlessness, haemoptysis – better make sure it is not tuberculosis.
In 2011 in Poland 8478 cases of turboculosis were registered. According to the Institute, the incidence of tuberculosis is still higher than the average in the countries of the European Union and in Norway and Ireland.
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