A total of 335 suspected individuals exhibiting signs of fever, cough, weight loss, sputum production, chronic diarrhea, hemoptysis of more than four weeks duration were investigated initially by chest X-ray images, complete blood picture, urine examination, Mantoux test, sputum test for acid fast bacillus (AFB) and fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC).
Acid fast bacillus (AFB) smear test The smears of sputum, peritoneal and pleural fluids and content of lymph nodes were fixed, dried in the air, heat fixed and stained with Ziehl-Neelsen stain (ZN stain) and studied under the microscope to detect acid fast bacilli (Watt et al., 1996; Iqbal et al., 2010).