Tuberculosis among health care workers in a tertiary care institute for respiratory diseases in New Delhi.

"BACKGROUND: LRS Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, a tertiary care pulmonary institute in Delhi, India. AIMS: To find out the risk of tuberculosis disease among health care workers (HCWs) of LRS Institute. METHODS: Retrospective study, where all members of the staff working in this hospital were interviewed regarding development of tuberculosis after joining this institute. RESULTS: A total of 40 cases of tuberculosis were reported by the health care workers between March 1999 to March 2008 yielding an overall risk of 727 per 1,00,000 population per year which is four times higher than the reported national average. Among these 40 cases, 25 (62.5%) were pulmonary and 15 (37.5%) were extra-pulmonary tuberculosis. CONCLUSION: This institute's health care workers have to deal with a large number of tuberculosis patients, the risk of exposure is more in them and thus having the disease. Multi-centric studies are needed to evaluate the true prevalence of tuberculosis among HCWs and effective intervention strategies are required to reduce nosocomial transmission."