08 Jul • Mozambique
Mozambique: Health Alliance International engages community health workers to conduct TB screening at health facilities
Activities of 30 Community Health Workers include patient TB education, TB screening at all clinical sites in health facilities and contact tracing in communities.
28 May, 2019
African Regional TB Summit: It’s time for Africa to step up efforts to find all missing people with TB
The African Regional TB Summit took place March 4-6 in Kigali, Rwanda, to review progress and challenges, share best practices and support countries to achieve national and global targets.
03 May, 2019
Mozambique: CCS launches TB case-finding activities at community level
Community-based organizations and community health workers are empowered and encouraged to lead TB fighting efforts.
18 March, 2019
Mozambique is missing more than 54% of its 159,000 people estimated to have developed drug-sensitive TB in 2016. During the same year, nearly 87% of its 7,600 people estimated to have developed drug-resistant TB were also missed by the health system.
To find more of its missing people, Mozambique is seeking to significantly increase TB case notification and drive demand for symptomatic screening, digital chest X-ray, GeneXpert and DST testing. The NTP has developed a standard package of services for TB, TB/HIV and MDR-TB patients designed for CHWs, which will be put to more extensive use. Mozambique plans to hire and support CHWs in more provinces to do FAST cough screening at health centers and name-based contract tracing in households as well as work places. Moreover, the CHWs will provide tracers for patients that were diagnosed with TB and MDR-TB but did not start treatment, or who started treatment but were subsequently lost to follow-up. An enhanced package of services for MDR-TB patients will also be provided to help increase their treatment success rates. Retention of TB and MDR-TB patients will further be supported in priority provinces through home-based supervision,cash transfer and nutritional support.
Another challenge Mozambique is seeking to tackle more effectively is in the area of sputum sample transport, culture, line probe assays and DST testing at the national reference laboratories. GeneXpert testing will be decentralized to each district and intra-district sputum transport networks for eligible patients are being established. These networks are using using their CHWs, contract motorcycle drivers, chapas drivers or other low-cost, reliable logistics solutions to transport samples from peripheral health centers for smear or GeneXpert testing to district laboratory hubs. Finally, MDR-TB screening campaigns for retreatment cases, MDR-TB contacts, miners and healthcare workersare regularly conducted across the provinces.