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      Accessibility to tuberculosis control services and tuberculosis programme performance in southern Ethiopia

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          Abstract

          Background

          Despite the expansion of health services and community-based interventions in Ethiopia, limited evidence exists about the distribution of and access to health facilities and their relationship with the performance of tuberculosis (TB) control programmes. We aim to assess the geographical distribution of and physical accessibility to TB control services and their relationship with TB case notification rates (CNRs) and treatment outcome in the Sidama Zone, southern Ethiopia.

          Design

          We carried out an ecological study to assess physical accessibility to TB control facilities and the association of physical accessibility with TB CNRs and treatment outcome. We collected smear-positive pulmonary TB (PTB) cases treated during 2003–2012 from unit TB registers and TB service data such as availability of basic supplies for TB control and geographic locations of health services. We used ArcGIS 10.2 to measure the distance from each enumeration location to the nearest TB control facilities. A linear regression analysis was employed to assess factors associated with TB CNRs and treatment outcome.

          Results

          Over a decade the health service coverage (the health facility–to-population ratio) increased by 36% and the accessibility to TB control facilities also improved. Thus, the mean distance from TB control services was 7.6 km in 2003 (ranging from 1.8 to 25.5 km) between kebeles (the smallest administrative units) and had decreased to 3.2 km in 2012 (ranging from 1.5 to 12.4 km). In multivariate linear regression, as distance from TB diagnostic facilities (b-estimate=−0.25, p<0.001) and altitude (b-estimate=−0.31, p<0.001) increased, the CNRs of TB decreased, whereas a higher population density was associated with increased TB CNRs. Similarly, distance to TB control facilities (b-estimate=−0.27, p<0.001) and altitude (b-estimate=−0.30, p<0.001) were inversely associated with treatment success (proportion of treatment completed or cured cases).

          Conclusions

          Accessibility to TB control services improved despite the geographic variations. TB CNRs were higher in areas where people had better access to diagnostic and treatment centres. Community-based interventions also played an important role for the increased CNRs in most areas.

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          Most cited references34

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          Health service coverage and its evaluation.

          Health service coverage is considered as a concept expressing the extent of interaction between the service and the people for whom it is intended, this interaction not being limited to a particular aspect of service provision but ranging over the whole process from resource allocation to achievement of the desired objective. For the measurement of coverage, several key stages are first identified, each of them involving the realization of an important condition for providing the service; a coverage measure is then defined for each stage, namely the ratio between the number of people for whom the condition is met and the target population, so that a set of these measures represents the interaction between the service and the target population. This definition of coverage allows for variations, which are called "specific coverage", by limiting the target population to specific subgroups differentiated by certain conditions related to service provision or by demographic or socioeconomic factors.The evaluation of coverage on the basis of these concepts enables management to identify bottlenecks in the operation of the service, to analyse the constraining factors responsible for such bottlenecks, and to select effective measures for service development.
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            Health Extension Workers Improve Tuberculosis Case Detection and Treatment Success in Southern Ethiopia: A Community Randomized Trial

            Background One of the main strategies to control tuberculosis (TB) is to find and treat people with active disease. Unfortunately, the case detection rates remain low in many countries. Thus, we need interventions to find and treat sufficient number of patients to control TB. We investigated whether involving health extension workers (HEWs: trained community health workers) in TB control improved smear-positive case detection and treatment success rates in southern Ethiopia. Methodology/Principal Finding We carried out a community-randomized trial in southern Ethiopia from September 2006 to April 2008. Fifty-one kebeles (with a total population of 296, 811) were randomly allocated to intervention and control groups. We trained HEWs in the intervention kebeles on how to identify suspects, collect sputum, and provide directly observed treatment. The HEWs in the intervention kebeles advised people with productive cough of 2 weeks or more duration to attend the health posts. Two hundred and thirty smear-positive patients were identified from the intervention and 88 patients from the control kebeles. The mean case detection rate was higher in the intervention than in the control kebeles (122.2% vs 69.4%, p<0.001). In addition, more females patients were identified in the intervention kebeles (149.0 vs 91.6, p<0.001). The mean treatment success rate was higher in the intervention than in the control kebeles (89.3% vs 83.1%, p = 0.012) and more for females patients (89.8% vs 81.3%, p = 0.05). Conclusions/Significance The involvement of HEWs in sputum collection and treatment improved smear-positive case detection and treatment success rate, possibly because of an improved service access. This could be applied in settings with low health service coverage and a shortage of health workers. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00803322
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              What does universal health coverage mean?

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Glob Health Action
                Glob Health Action
                GHA
                Global Health Action
                Co-Action Publishing
                1654-9716
                1654-9880
                20 November 2015
                2015
                : 8
                : 10.3402/gha.v8.29443
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Centre for International Health, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
                [2 ]School of Public and Environmental Health, College of Medicine and Health sciences, Hawassa University, Hawassa, Ethiopia
                [3 ]Sidama Zone Health Department, Hawassa, Ethiopia
                [4 ]HHA – REACH Ethiopia, Hawassa, Ethiopia
                [5 ]Department of Clinical Sciences, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, United Kingdom
                Author notes
                [* ]Correspondence to: Mesay Hailu Dangisso, Hawassa University, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Public and Environmental Health, P.O. Box 1560, Ethiopia, Email: mesayhailudangiso@ 123456yahoo.com

                Responsible Editor: Stig Wall, Umeå University, Sweden.

                Article
                29443
                10.3402/gha.v8.29443
                4655224
                26593274
                db3cd2da-8a54-45f1-8d15-10a7c1f21712
                © 2015 Mesay Hailu Dangisso et al.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.

                History
                : 15 August 2015
                : 27 October 2015
                : 28 October 2015
                Categories
                Original Article

                Health & Social care
                public health,population health,tuberculosis control,health systems,developing countries,africa

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