LUSAKA, 26 January 2011 (PlusNews): New technologies are helping Zambia make the most of its scarce health workers and laboratories in the fight against tuberculosis (TB), and showing that there may be more to a container than meets the eye.
The Zambia Aids-Related TB Project (ZAMBART), a local NGO that provides testing and treatment, has introduced easy-to-use digital chest x-rays (røntgenundersøgelser) and relatively cheap made-to-order laboratories to help close gaps in stepping up the fight against TB and HIV, which are common co-infections.
In a country where about 39.000 new cases of TB are reported annually, these innovations could help combat the high level of undiagnosed infectious TB, the recent Zambia-South Africa TB and AIDS Reduction (ZAMSTAR) study noted.
According to UNAIDS, about 14 percent of Zambians are HIV-positive, which greatly increases their vulnerability to TB. ZAMBART estimates that about 70 percent of TB patients are co-infected with HIV, making them harder to diagnose and more likely to die from TB, the leading killer of HIV-positive people worldwide.
Technology meets task shifting
The ZAMSTAR study also found that while many patients with a chronic cough – a symptom of TB – did not seek medical attention, those who did were often poorly investigated.
After routine screening for TB, clinic staff asked TB suspects for a sputum (spyt) sample. In HIV/TB co-infected patients these samples were more likely to result in a false positive result, so health workers used chest X-rays to confirm test results.
Gideon Phiri, a ZAMBART research associate based at Kanyama Clinic in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, said the facility served an estimated 14.000 households.
Housed in a small container, Kanyama’s new x-ray machine is easy to secure, and a shortage of health workers has been overcome because the machine is so easy to use that local students like Timothy Manja, now in his a third year of study at the nearby Evelyn Hone College, learnt to operate it in a day and can use the experience towards his practical training requirement.
Shortages of medical personnel, such as x-ray operators and lab technicians, have also prompted ZAMBART and Zambia’s Ministry of Health to pilot the use of high school graduates to collect and analyse sputum samples at Kanyama.
The X-rays Manja takes also form part of a database being used by the machine’s manufacturers, Delft Diagnostic Imaging, to develop a system for TB detection, in which a computer would compare a patient’s chest x-ray to a database of images so as to flag possible TB cases.
This would facilitate early detection, and also reduce the heavy caseload of health professionals.
Nurse Foster Chileshe said the onsite machine decreased the time patients had to wait for x-rays, and there were fewer follow-up losses.
Good things come in containers
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