Title: The Impact of Community Outreach on Tuberculosis Case Notification in Taraba State, Northeastern Nigeria.
Authors: Nzunde Markus and Dr. Haruna Ismail Adamu
Volume: 8
Issue: 9
Pages: 140-153
Publication Date: 2024/09/28
Abstract:
Tuberculosis is the second leading cause of mortality due to single infectious agent. The greatest challenge to TB control at all levels (Global, National and Subnational) is the low TB case notification. There is huge gap between the estimated incident cases of TB and the notified TB cases globally, nationally and at the Subnational level like Taraba state despites many interventions. The broad objective of this study is to assess the impact of community outreach on Tuberculosis case notification in Taraba State Northeastern Nigeria in order to make appropriate recommendations to the National and State Tuberculosis control programme. A quantitative intervention design to review of the community TB outreach intervention and State TB data to assess the impact of TB outreach on TB case notification. The community outreach were conducted in a purposefully selected LGA from each of the senatorial zones and a contagious LGA with similar demography were selected as control. Excel and SPSS were used to analyze the data. Five thousand one hundred and thirty three (5133) people were screened clinically for Tuberculosis. 2051 presumptive TB cases were identified. 126 (6.1% positivity rate) were confirmed TB cases and were all placed on treatment. There was 76% increase in total presumptive TB cases notified in the ILGAs in 2019 compared to the total presumptive TB cases notified same LGAs in 2018. The estimated marginal means of measure of impact for both Presumptive TB cases and confirmed TB cases between pre-intervention (T1) and post intervention (T2) shows significant increase in both the presumptive and confirmed TB cases in ILGAs compare to the CLGAs. The study concluded that community TB outreach significantly contributed to increase both presumptive and confirmed TB case notification in Taraba State. Community outreach can be used to improve TB case notification especially in hard to reach communities. Vigorous implementation of the second principle of the END TB STRATEGY; "Promote strong coalition with civil society organizations and communities", may go a long way to addressing the low TB case notification at the national and the subnational level.