Tuberculosis non-DOT monthly sputum testing--needs to be with panel physician or not?

[northusa44 4]

Asking for a friend:

. 

We know someone who is applying for a green card (consulate processing, China) but unfortunately was found to have tuberculosis. They do not live in a city with DOT (Directly Observed Therapy) available and the panel physician said they need to go the 6 months of testing + 1 year of waiting route before rescheduling. The panel physician for the consulate has been in pretty close contact. Our friend is now about a month plus into treatment at a local hispitral and the panel physician wants them to come to his city to do sputum testing. This will require a 3.5 hour flight. The panel physician said they will have to do this at least twice.

 

I'm pretty sure that the panel physician is following the guidelines in the Technical Instructions for Panel Physicians (Tuberculosis Technical Instructions for Panel Physicians | CDC). The two relevant sections (scroll down or ctl + f search) are "Tuberculosis Treatment and Monitoring" and "Tuberculosis Treatment Monitoring" (the latter is also linked to "Sputum Collection") .The former section specifies rules for DOT and non-DOT treatment. Again, my friend is doing the non-DOT treatment since there is no panel physician anywhere close to their city

 

My query is whether the panel physician is correct in still asking them to make this very inconvenient/expensive trip to go in-person to the panel physician for sputum testing? We are pretty confused as to why they need to do this if they are doing the non-DOT route. In other words, why can't they do the sputum testing with the treating physician at their treating hospital?

 

(With that said, the above document itself does not seem to clearly state in the latter section whether the sputum testing is DOT/non-DOT  and whether it is supposed to be done with the panel physician or not) 

 

If anyone has any experience with this we would very much appreciate thoughts. We don't want to inconvenience/upset the panel physician with queries about this unless it is clear that they are incorrectly interpreting the document.

 

(mods: I would very much appreciate not putting this in 'China'--this is such a niche question that I would like to know experiences for people from around the world for)

 

[Boiler 43,539]

All the cases I have seen what the Panel Physician says goes.

[northusa44 4]

18 hours ago, Boiler said:

All the cases I have seen what the Panel Physician says goes.

Thank you! Will be curious to see if others have had the same experience?

[northusa44 4]

Just giving this a bump--would love to hear from one or two more with experience, just to confirm the good advice given above.