Tuberculosis (TB) is a cause and effect of undernutrition. Patients with active TB in India have a high prevalence of severe undernutrition, an important comorbidity, which increases the risk of mortality, serious adverse effects, relapses after cure and impairs functional status. The World Health Organization and Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme have now recommended that nutritional assessment, counseling, and support be considered as integral parts of TB care. Nutritional assessment requires calculations of body mass index (BMI) to classify severity of undernutrition at diagnosis and ascertain nutritional recovery at follow-up. We present BMI-based field charts constructed for use by healthcare workers which obviate calculations of BMI and provide weights corresponding to BMI categories, and body weight corresponding to a desirable BMI of 21 kg/m2. These simplified BMI-based field charts will enable appropriate assessment, counseling, and monitoring of undernourished patients with active TB by peripheral health workers in programmatic settings.
Keywords: Body mass index; direct benefit transfer; nutritional assessment; tuberculosis; undernutrition.