Biosafety in tuberculosis

Abstract

Introduction: health workers who handle infectious agents or potentially infected materials must be aware of the potential risks and be experts in the practices and techniques of safe handling of such materials. Among the most common infectious agents is included the Mycobacterium tuberculosis, bacteria that usually affects the lungs; this infection is curable and can be prevented with established biosecurity measures.

Objective: to characterize the biosecurity measures for the prevention of tuberculosis, in summary and structured form, as a reference material for the collaborators of the Cuban Medical Mission.

Method: the literature on the subject, corresponding to the past five years and available in sources of information from international organizations, as well as databases and Internet collections (Dynamed, LILACS, Medline, SciELO Cuba, CUMED, ClinicalKey, Springer, EBSCO, etc.), in Spanish and English, was revised; for searching were used the terms “biosafety”, “tuberculosis”, “tuberculosis and exposure to biological agents”. From the selected items was prepared an updated review.

Conclusions: occupational exposure to infection is a serious problem; because of the nature of their work, health workers are considered with high risk for the spread of infections such as tuberculosis. In the prevention of nosocomial transmission of tuberculosis are essentials the fulfillment of the established biosafety measures for its infectious agent, the regular monitoring of workers health with occupational risk and the health training of health personnel in general.