What we provide

An important aim of our service is to support patients to successfully complete their treatment.

 

You will be assigned a member of our team and be given their contact telephone number.

 

You may be offered support to take your medication either directly from the clinic, or in your home or community by our Outreach Worker team.

 

NCL TB Service aims to provide a holistic approach to caring for people affected  by TB, which may be only one of the problems they may be facing.  We have a Social Care Team who can provide confidential advice, support and advocacy to help address these other problems which may include:

 

Multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) is TB that is resistant to at least Isoniazid and Rifampicin. These are two of the main antibiotics used for treating TB.
http://www.who.int/features/qa/79/en/

The South Hub/UCLH and the Royal Free are the NCL centres that have been designated as specialist centres for managing MDR-TB and are able to prescribe bedaquiline and delaminid

 

For further details please go to ‘Our clinics and how to contact us’

TB in children is very uncommon.  In 2016, 207 children were diagnosed with active TB in England.

 

We have paediatricians who look after children with TB.

 

We can also offer access to a family clinic if child(ren) and adult(s) from the same family are being investigated or treated for TB.

 

For further details please go to ‘Our clinics and how to contact us’

If you have HIV your ability to fight off infections including TB is reduced and your risk of developing TB is higher than someone who does not have HIV.
www.tht.org.uk/myhiv/staying-healthy/coinfection/tuberculosis

All patients with active TB will be offered an HIV test during their care. This is a blood test www.tbalert.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ImportantTest_old.pdf

 

In 2016 only 3.8% of patients diagnosed with TB in the UK also had HIV infection.

 

NCL-TB service offers dedicated specialist HIV-TB clinics at the South Hub (Whittington), Royal Free and North Middlesex sites.

 

For further details please go to ‘Our clinics and how to contact us’

We undertake screening for latent and active TB.

 

We undertake incident/outbreak contact investigations, working closely with Public Health, when large numbers of people may need to be screened.

We offer free screening and treatment for LTBI in migrants aged 16 to 35 years who recently arrived in England (in past 5 years) from countries with a high incidence of TB.

 

For further details please go to our clinics and how to contact us.

We only offer BCG vaccination to people who have been in contact with someone with TB in the lungs, who have not had BCG before, are less than 16 years old and have no evidence of active or latent TB.
 
For further information about BCG and if it is recommended for you please see What about vaccination against TB?

Research is important to understand TB better and provide better treatments.
 

The clinics in North Central London are actively undertaking research in TB.

 

You may be asked to join in a research study. The details of any research that you could help us with will be fully explained to you.

There are opportunities for teaching and training in all aspects of TB to public, health care providers and allied care givers.

 

Please contact us for further information.