A report on home visiting practices conducted in remote districts of Nepal in an NGO-run tuberculosis control programme.

To establish the role of home visiting in an NGO-run tuberculosis control programme in Nepal, information was collected on home visits to a cohort of 205 smear-positive patients. Almost one third of new smear-positive cases were visited, either for treatment initiation (n = 33) or for retrieval following non-attendance (n = 29); thus 14% of patients required a home visit to ensure treatment completion. It is unlikely that the WHO-recommended target of 85% cure rate would be achieved without defaulter tracing, although a further study comparing home visiting against no visiting would be necessary to assess the contribution that this activity makes to improving treatment outcomes.