HCV – hepatitis C, a virus that causes liver disease.
Glossary
Selected words and phrases
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.
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.
See sensitivity.
retrovirus – a family of viruses that includes HIV.