Abstract:
Tuberculosis (TB) is still a major public health concern, despite the availability of preventative
and curative therapies. Significant progress has been made in the past decade towards its control.
However, the emergence of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disrupted numerous
essential health services, including those for TB. This scoping review maps the available evidence on
TB services at the primary healthcare (PHC) level during the COVID-19 period. A comprehensive
literature search was conducted in PubMed,Web of Science, Medline OVID, Medline EBSCO, and
Scopus. A total of 820 articles were retrieved from the databases and 21 met the eligibility criteria and
were used for data extraction. The emerging themes were the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on TB
services, patient and provider experiences, recommendations for TB services during the COVID-19
period, and the implementation of the recommendations. The review found that the mitigation
strategies, as well as fear and stigma experienced at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic may have
led to TB cases potentially going undetected, which may threaten TB treatment outcomes. Therefore,
efforts must be directed at finding these missing cases and ensuring that PHC facilities are equipped
to adequately diagnose and treat them.
