HIV TB coinfection- perspectives from India.

Rewari, Bharat Bhushan; Kumar, Amitabh; Mandal, Partha Pratim; Puri, Anoop Kumar

Introduction: HIV and tuberculosis (TB) are the two of the most challenging infections faced by humanity and place immense burden on health care systems worldwide. Both HIV and TB impact one another's progression.Areas covered: HIV is the most important risk factor for progression of latent TB to active disease. TB is the most common cause of death among People Living with HIV (PLHIV). Timely detection of TB among PLHIV and screening for HIV among TB patients, early initiation of ART and ATT among coinfected persons, provision of CPT and TB Preventive therapy along with control of air borne infection are some of the key activities to reduce morbidity and mortality among co infected persons. Despite many challenges, the collaboration between two programmes have yielded good results and globally more than 7.3 million lives of PLHIV have been saved globally through scale-up of collaborative TB/HIV activities since 2005. The review looked into key features of both programmes, are the collaboration strategies and challenges that still need to be addressedExpert opinion: The overarching principle for effective implementation of collaborative activities is integration of the TB and HIV national programmes right from policy making to service delivery and monitoring.