THE Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and National Tuberculosis Program provided training last month to medical technicians on how to use microscopes to analyse the saliva of suspected tuberculosis patients.

The training lasted three days for senior technicians and 10 days for junior technicians.

Dr Daw Ti Ti, a senior consultant microbiologist with the program, said the training was aimed at promoting discussion about new findings concerning TB, as well as providing a forum for an exchange of experiences between senior and junior technicians.

“We often offer quality-control trainings to lab technicians in collaboration with JICA and we tell them how important sputum microbiology is to the TB program,” she said.

Dr Daw Ti Ti explained that collecting good-quality sputum from TB patients is crucial to getting an accurate laboratory diagnosis.

“If we do not get good sputum, we can misdiagnose the problem. This is a problem because a person with active but untreated TB can infect from 10 to 15 other people within a year,” she said.

She said healthcare workers were responsible for instructing patients on how to produce good sputum samples.