Preventive strategies for tuberculosis in primary health care

Abstract

Objective: To identify the main preventive strategies of tuberculosis (TB) in primary health care (PHC). Methods: This is an integrative literature review, where we searched the articles available on the data platforms: Latin American and Caribbean Literature on Health Sciences, the Virtual Health Library and Science Direct, of which were Pre-selected 136 articles and 16 selected. The inclusion criteria were the publication period from 2014 to 2019 and the selected languages were Portuguese, English and Spanish. The exclusion criteria were articles with more than five years of publication and monographs, dissertations and theses specifically. Results: Indicated that 12.5% of articles reported the prevention of TB is still predominantly focused on vaccination, 12.5% related to drug prophylaxis; only 6.25% describe short-term Observed Direction Treatment; 12.5% emphasized educational actions, and 56.25% included improvements in the structure of Basic Health Units and qualification of health professionals. Conclusion: That TB preventive actions in PHC are: immunization, secondary prevention through chemoprophylaxis of exposed persons, the directly observed treatment of short duration, educational actions; Improvement in the decentralization of health services and better emphasis on management in the qualification of professionals and improvement of the structure of the UBS.