Dramatic results from TB REACH project make case for mHealth scale up
14 June 2012 – Karachi, Pakistan – Mobile phones and financial incentives helped a network of private clinics serving poor communities in Karachi find twice as many people with tuberculosis (TB) in 2011 compared to the previous year.
This is the key finding of a
study published today
in Lancet Infectious Diseases, which reports on the
impact of a project run by Karachi's Indus Hospital and funded
by the Stop TB Partnership's TB REACH initiative.
The
clinics provided community members with electronic scorecards on
mobile phones which they used to identify people who should get
a TB test. The community members received cash incentives for
each person with TB that they helped to find. In addition,
posters, television advertisements and flyers encouraged people
with a persistent cough to visit their local clinic for TB
testing.
As a result of these activities, the project
identified 3140 people with TB among nearly one million people
in the Korangi and Bin Qasim neighbourhoods of Karachi. This
made the Indus Hospital the second largest provider of TB care
in the country in 2011. In a neighbouring control area
comprising the Landhi and Shah Faisal districts, which together
have a similar population, the number of people referred for
treatment decreased by 9%.
The study follows a
paper,
Pushing the Frontier, by the mHealth Alliance and the Stop TB Partnership which
seeks to raise awareness about mHealth's potential to improve
the reach and quality of TB care. The paper includes several
examples of innovative mHealth projects and calls for more
evidence on the benefits of using mHealth in TB.
"mHealth is emerging as one of the most potent
weapons in the fight against TB. With these results from
Karachi, there is now clear proof that using mobile phones and
engaging with the private sector can help us to find and treat
the estimated three million people a year that fail to access
quality TB care," said Dr Lucica Ditiu, Executive Secretary of
the Stop TB Partnership.
"As this project
demonstrates, through TB REACH we are incubating innovations
that have the potential to be scaled up through national health
programmes or further donor funding," Dr Ditiu said. "We will
soon issue a third call for TB REACH proposals that will launch
a new wave of innovative projects, including many that feature
mHealth components."
To further understanding about
mHealth in TB, Interactive Research and Development (IRD), the
organization which developed the scorecard used in Karachi,
recently published a new report,
mHealth to Improve TB Care. The report summarizes the experiences from 31 mHealth
projects from around the world. The projects focused on helping
TB patients stick to their treatment, enabling mobile diagnosis
and raising awareness.
These early projects show
great potential, the authors write. But more formal
evaluations—such as those conducted in Karachi—are
needed so that TB programme managers can make informed decisions
on how to design and deliver their own mHealth projects.
"I
know of no tool that holds as much promise as the mobile phone
for closing the loop between diagnosis and successful treatment,
effectively and affordably," said Aamir Khan, Executive Director
of IRD. "Now we need to move towards implementing proven mHealth
approaches more widely and at scale."
The Stop TB
Partnership's
TB REACH
initiative funds innovative projects that result in early and
increased detection of TB cases and ensure their timely
treatment. Funded by a grant from the Canadian International
Development Agency, TB REACH has so far funded 75 projects in 36
countries. The first wave of projects contributed to a 34%
increase in the number of people found with TB in a population
of more than 100 million people.
Read the article in the Lancet
Stop TB Partnership
