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Glossary

Selected words and phrases

HCV – hepatitis C, a virus that causes liver disease.

Guide to HIV and hepatitis C coinfection.

DOT (directly observed therapy) – where a nurse or other healthcare worker observes or supervises someone take medicine.

TB (tuberculosis) – a bacterial infection that commonly affects the lungs (pulmonary TB) but which can also affect most other organs.

TB section of the training manual.

specificity – when referring to the accuracy of a test result, specificity refers to the proportion of people who do not have an illness or disease who have a negative test result.

If a test has low specificity, the concern is over false-positive results – where people who to not have a condition are wrongly diagnosed as having it.

If a test has high specificity, then people who to not have a condition are correctly ruled out from the condition.

For a serious condition, high specificity is essential to prevent people being unnecessarily treated.

Online calculator.

See sensitivity.

retrovirus – a family of viruses that includes HIV.