The North West Department of Health will tomorrow embark on an Intensified Tuberculosis (TB) Case finding across the province to increase awareness for prevention and management of TB. As part of the TB case finding, community health care workers, Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) supporters , nurses and development partners like TB Free will visit households for TB screening. Those found to have TB will be put on treatment immediately.
This will culminate with the World TB Day commemoration event to be held in Rustenburg on 24 March 2012. March has been declared TB Month.
Intensified TB Case Finding has been identified as one of the key priority areas critical to the success of Department’s effort to promote greater community involvement in disease management, community development, and empowerment to deal with own health issues and promote an integrated healthcare management system.
TB case finding proved to be the most effective method to intensify community education on Tuberculosis, improve treatment adherence of all diagnosed patients, solicit treatment support for all patients on treatment by their immediate family members, and improve TB outcomes when it was piloted in the Dr. Kenneth Kaunda District in January 2011. The pilot project also covered certain parts of Bojanala and Ngaka Modiri Molema districts reaching a total number of 4225 households, where 8618 people were screened for TB – of which 174 people were confirmed to have TB. All the 174 people who were diagnosed with TB were immediately put on treatment.
The department together with Nelson Mandela Aventis Project for combating TB know as TB-FREE has successfully completed its training of 797 Direct DOT supporters in 2010 and the number was increased with 750 in 2011 resulting in a total of 1547 trained DOTS supporters. This is the department’s effort to curb TB defaulter rate in the province.
The DOT supporters who were declared competent at the end of training conducted since 2009 until 2011 have been deployed to provide service in clinics within their communities. The DOT supporters use 28 dedicated TB vehicles provided by the Department to visit TB patients in their homes to make sure that they complete their prescribed treatment. This led to Department recording a huge drop in numbers of people refusing to take treatment by 10.8% in 2009, 9% in 2010 to 8.6% in 2011.
Enquiries:
Tebogo Lekgethwane
Cell: 082 929 9958
E-mail: Tlekgethwane@nwpg.gov.za
North West Health to embark on intensified TB case finding across the province to mark TB month
Province
