Is there room for improvement? Intervening at facility and district level to improve access and quality of care in a well-performing TB Control Programme: the Cape Town experience (original) (raw)
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Assessing care for patients with TB/HIV/STI infections in a rural district in KwaZulu-Natal
South African medical journal = Suid-Afrikaanse tydskrif vir geneeskunde, 2011
Despite the prioritisation of TB, HIV and STI programmes in South Africa, service targets are not achieved, have had little effect, and the magnitude of the epidemics continues to escalate. Objective. To report on a participatory quality improvement intervention designed to evaluate these priority programmes in primary health care (PHC) clinics in a rural district in KwaZulu-Natal. A participatory quality improvement intervention with district health managers, PHC supervisors and researchers was used to modify a TB/HIV/STI audit tool for use in a rural area, conduct a district-wide clinic audit, assess performance, set targets and develop plans to address the problems identified. We highlight weaknesses in training and support of staff at PHC clinics, pharmaceutical and laboratory failures, and inadequate monitoring of patients as contributing to poor TB, HIV and STI service implementation. In the 25 facilities audited, 71% of the clinical staff had received no training in TB diagno...
The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2007
Edendale Hospital. The goal of iTEACH was to identify barriers to effective treatment and develop support interventions to enable rapid expansion of access to ART and improve ART and TB treatment outcomes within the district served by this facility. In the present article, we discuss challenges to the delivery of TB and HIV care by these separate treatment programs, as well as opportunities to improve both TB treatment and ART outcomes through lessons learned during ART scale-up in the context of the HIV and TB coepidemics.
TB prevention cascade at a district hospital in rural Eastern Cape, South Africa
Public health action, 2021
Public Health Action (PHA) welcomes the submission of articles on all aspects of operational research, including quality improvements, costbenefit analysis, ethics, equity, access to services and capacity building, with a focus on relevant areas of public health (e.g. infection control, nutrition, TB, HIV, vaccines, smoking, COVID-19, microbial resistance, outbreaks etc). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 4.0 published by The Union (www.theunion.org
Current Integration of Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV Services in South Africa, 2011
PLoS ONE, 2013
Design: Cross-sectional study of 49 randomly selected health facilities in South Africa. Trained interviewers administered a standardized questionnaire to one staff member responsible for TB and HIV in each facility on aspects of TB/HIV policy, integration and recording and reporting. We calculated and compared descriptive statistics by province and facility type. Results: Of the 49 health facilities 35 (71%) provided isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) and 35 (71%) offered antiretroviral therapy (ART). Among assessed sites in February 2011, 2,512 patients were newly diagnosed with HIV infection, of whom 1,913 (76%) were screened for TB symptoms, and 616 of 1,332 (46%) of those screened negative for TB were initiated on IPT. Of 1,072 patients newly registered with TB in February 2011, 144 (13%) were already on ART prior to Tb clinical diagnosis, and 451 (42%) were newly diagnosed with HIV infection. Of those, 84 (19%) were initiated on ART. Primary health clinics were less likely to offer ART compared to district hospitals or community health centers (p,0.001). Conclusion: As of February 2011, integration of TB and HIV services is taking place in public medical facilities in South Africa. Among these services, IPT in people living with HIV and ART in TB patients are the least available.
Journal of Public Health in Africa, 2010
There is increasing evidence demonstrating the importance of healthcare systems for improvement of chronic illness care. The aims of this study were to develop a comprehensive assessment of the health services capacity to provide tuberculosis (TB) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) care but also to enhance patient empowerment, social network and community support. A cross-sectional study was conducted from 1 to 31 of August 2007 in 3 districts of Burkina Faso. We used a step-bystep model and the assessment of chronic illness care (ACIC) scale to assess capacities of 24 first line health centres (FLHC) and 3 district hospitals (DH) for providing TB and HIV/AIDS care. Data for the step-by-step model were extracted from medical records of 75 TB and 66 HIV patients. The ACIC scale was completed by health professionals, 6 medical doctors and 18 nurses, working at the DH level and at the FLHC level, respectively. The biological test for confirmation was free of charge for all the TB patients but only for 10.6% (7/66) HIV cases. Up to the time of the survey, 5 TB (6.6%) and 18 HIV + patients (27.3%) have been hospitalised for care at least once, 64 TB (85.3%) had been declared cured and 38 HIV (54.5%) were under antiretroviral treatment. Health care process organisation for TB and HIV care had distinct areas of weaknesses. From a maximum ACIC score of 11, the overall score for TB care ranged between 1.9 and 4.9 with a median of 3.7 and for HIV care between 2.1 and 6.7 with a median of 4.1. This study provides an illustration of assessing the HIV and TB care combining data from the routine information system and from the chronic illness care assessment tool, to encompass both disease control and patient health perspective. It provides to health managers arguments for clear conclusions and sufficient data for action.