The study was conducted to determine if homevisiting made any difference in the regularity of drug-taking, in the domiciliary treatment area of the NDTC. All cases of pulmonary TB in this area were included in the study. Every patient’s home was visited once, within one week of starting treatment, to give routine advice, motivate and confirm that the patient was a bonafide resident of the area. Thereafter, the patients were randomly allocated to three groups based on certain criteria. The regularity in drug collection was defined as:

             Drugs collected any period
-------------------------------------------------------       X   100
Drugs which should have been collected

The interim analysis of the data shows that home visiting definitely helps to reduce default and increase the regularity of drug collection. Whether the policy of “Preventive” visiting pays better dividends than retrieving defaulters still remains to be seen.