For tuberculosis patients in Karamoja, a region in northeastern Uganda close to the Kenyan border, getting access to the full course of TB treatment required can be difficult. Long distances to health facilities and poor road conditions can mean many patients drop out of the system between initially seeking out care and actually getting the diagnosis needed to be prescribed medicine.
To address this, the local St. Kizito Matany Hospital has adopted various solutions to bring testing closer to communities. This is to help ensure patients get early diagnosis and treatment, which can last from nine months to 20 months for stubborn cases of drug-resistant TB, Dr. Faustine Erau, a clinical officer and TB coordinator at the hospital, told Devex. Without treatment, the death rate from TB is about 50%.
“We implemented a menu of community-based approaches, such as involving the village health teams, the community, linkage facilitators, and even expert clients to participate in the screening of patients in the community,” he said.
Former TB patients who have been cured are recruited as so-called expert clients to help with everything from educating communities to sample collection and delivery to diagnostic centers, Erau said.
While COVID-19 temporarily overtook TB as the deadliest infectious disease in the height of the pandemic, TB is once again the world's biggest infectious killer and claimed some 1.6 million lives in 2021, according to the World Health Organization. The same year, an estimated 10.6 million people fell ill with TB. However, low- and middle-income countries shoulder a disproportionate burden of the disease, accounting for over 80% of TB cases and deaths.
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