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Community engagement in tuberculosis care

Published on March 31, 2024   30 min

A selection of talks on Clinical Practice

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0:00
Greetings everyone. My name is Lana Syed. I'm a social scientist by training. I work for the Global Tuberculosis Program of the World Health Organization. In today's talk, I'm going to talk about community engagement in tuberculosis care.
0:18
To start with the outline of the presentation, in today's session I'm going to talk you through the background and the context of community engagement in tuberculosis. I'm going to explain a little bit about what WHO guidance on community-based service delivery looks like. It's branded as ENGAGE-TB approach. I'm going to then talk about monitoring evaluation as the key component of community-based TB service delivery. Then we're going to move to the recent past in 2018 with the first ever United Nations Secretary-General high-level meeting on tuberculosis. Then after that, I'm going to explain and talk a little bit about community engagement in tuberculosis in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then I'm going to finish off with what are the needs in tuberculosis response and community engagement within that, looking forward, and I'm going to finish off with the role of WHO.
1:19
Who carries the burden of tuberculosis? Tuberculosis spreads in crowded and poorly lit and poorly ventilated indoor settings. This is because it's transmitted through bacteria from a person with active pulmonary TB, through either coughing or sneezing or spitting, and so on. The factors that increase the risk of TB are common among marginalized and poor communities. For example, migrants, prisoners, hard to reach populations such as nomads, for example. Some of the key factors linked to TB include weak immune system, poverty, congregate settings, stigma, gender and legal restrictions. In terms of comorbidities and risk factors, tuberculosis is linked to HIV infection, but also to malnutrition and excessive alcohol, drug or tobacco use, and diabetes. Even though TB affects more men than women, women and children are particularly vulnerable. Women, due to the issues of stigma and misconceptions, the real risk of rejection by the family or the spouse, and particularly so more in traditional societies and children due to difficulties and challenges around diagnosis in children.