A health facility was defined as any TB service at provincial or supra-provincial level, as described under Setting.
A HCW was defined as anyone occurring on the payroll of the health facility in the specific year of reporting. This includes staff working in any clinical department, in paramedical sections (such as pharmacy), laboratories, and administrative and other support sections of the health facility.
TB was defined as active TB, and includes pulmonary (new and retreatment) and extra-pulmonary TB. Since reporting was anonymous we could not check whether these patients were notified and/or bacteriologically confirmed, and included any patient reported by the facility.
A TBIC plan is a written protocol for the prompt recognition, separation, provision of services, investigation for TB and referral of patients with suspected or confirmed TB disease in the health facility [12]. The TBIC plan was considered valid if the validity period included the reporting period. Since the TBIC plans were not available to the researchers, no content checks were conducted.
A TBIC focal person is the person in the health facility who is responsible for coordination of all TBIC activities in the health facility.