NOVEL TRANSPORT SOLUTION TO DETER COLD CHAIN IN SPUTUM SAMPLES TRANSPORTATION FOR TUBERCULOSIS DETECTION

摘要

The present invention provides a formulation of a transport solution to be used as an additive in sputum samples transported from peripheral health care centers/collection centers. The formulation is cost effective and easily available, which eliminates the mandatory and expensive cold chain transportation system for samples. The novel transport solution (NTS) with chemical additives is thermo tolerant, reduces contaminants & foul odour of the samples on storage, provides no interfere of used chemicals with each other, do not compromise with number and viability of acid fast bacilli (AFB) and do not interfere with molecular/culture assays. The baceriostatic properties of NTS keeps the growth of contaminants under control so that the population of AFB will not be masked by contaminates resulting in more sensitive results in the lab for M. tuberculosis culture drug sensitivity test and nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT).