Page:Niosh tb guidelines.pdf/27

Rh After considering these issues, it was concluded that any tuberculosis infection in a healthcare-facility worker due to occupational transmission should be considered unacceptable. Infection of health-care-facility workers with tuberculosis, whether with or without clinical disease, constitutes a preventable impairment of the health of these workers. Additionally, chemoprophylaxis of tuberculosis-infected workers with isoniazid (INH+) poses further significant risks due to isoniazid-related hepatitis and other potential side effects.

The rationale for isoniazid chemoprophylaxis for both those infected and not infected with tuberculosis is to reduce the probability that infected persons will develop active tuberculosis (75,76):

Others have described the limitations of isoniazid prophylaxis as follows (64):