HIV, Hepatitis, and Tuberculosis Management in Primary Care
Managing HIV, Hepatitis, and Tuberculosis in Primary Care
Key Activities for Primary Care Practitioners
- Control and monitor patients with HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and other relevant diseases.
- Establish referral and monitoring circuits between primary care and specialized services.
- Progressively introduce directly observed treatment (DOT) for tuberculosis at methadone dispensing points.
- Actively survey communicable diseases by regularly monitoring this population and expanding activities to cohabitants.
- Provide active immunization for hepatitis B and tetanus.
- Analyze strategies to improve uptake of services for this population and household care, with emphasis on mother-child programs.
- Correctly diagnose and refer drug-dependent patients to specialized care.
Comarcal Centers for Drug Addiction
- Refer patients to primary care physicians for evaluation and follow-up of organic pathology.
- Establish mutual information mechanisms.
- Establish referral and monitoring circuits with primary care.
- Participate in developing a model for correct documentation and follow-up of case studies.
- Enhance measures related to reducing harms associated with drug use.
- Meet specific training requirements in drug dependencies demanded by health devices, favoring common internal training areas.
Evaluation and Monitoring
Evaluation and monitoring should consider the service network’s reality and differentiate between patients in the methadone maintenance program, based on:
- Trigger: Assess patients included in the program relative to the patient census.
- Detection: Include this indicator in patients detected with pathologies relative to the population served. Value pathologies discovered in cohabitant studies, including the number of positive cases. Identify stabilizing patients without health coverage.
- Coverage: Track tetanus and Hepatitis B immunization rates for patients in the program and their cohabitants. Monitor completion rates of TB chemoprophylaxis, implementation of directly observed treatment for TB, inclusion in other health programs, and stabilization of patients lacking health coverage.
Types of Consumers
- Experimental: Individuals curious to try new substances.
- Circumstantial: Access to substances due to the environment during an activity, very occasionally.
- Social: Consumption resulting from peer pressure in a given place, within an environment with more consumers, as part of group acceptance.
- Compulsive: Consumes large quantities in short time spans at specific times, but only in specific environments and with malice aforethought. Use or consumption on special occasions.
- Habitual: Consumes a test substance as a habit, beginning with the search for or obtaining drugs.
- Weekends: Consumption can be considered part of a habit for all weekends.
- Drug Addicts: Life revolves around obtaining and using the substance, leading to lifestyle changes and characteristics such as tolerance, withdrawal, and compulsion.