TB Activistas: Improving Tuberculosis Screening, Diagnosis, and Linkages to Care
HAI helped build the case for bridging the community-to-clinic gap to increase TB case detection using community health workers, or activistas as they’re known in Mozambique.

In countries like Mozambique, only 57% of the estimated cases of TB are diagnosed and treated each year. In an effort to reduce TB infection rates in Mozambique, HAI partnered with Mozambique’s National TB Program to recruit 30 Community Health Workers, known as activistas, to offer community-to-clinic linkages across five districts in Mozambique. The activistas led short TB teaching sessions for patients waiting at the health facilities and perform active screenings of patients at all clinical sites. Activistas are also responsible for tracing patients diagnosed with TB who do not return for their results or who abandon therapy.
In just one year, these 30 activistas led to a significant increase in the number of cases of all forms of TB that were identified and reported in the project areas. Activistas reached ~337,000 people and increased TB detection and bacteriological confirmation by 14.6%, demonstrating that targeted case-finding in communities and clinic-based information sessions can have a dramatic impact on TB case detection.

HAI-LIGHTS
The strategies and tools developed for activistas in this project have been adopted as part of a standardized package of instruments for all community TB partners in Mozambique.
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Publications
News/Media
The impact of intensified TB screening at health facilities and via contact tracing in central Mozambique | Abstract, 50th World Conference on Lung Health, 2019, Hyderabad, India |
Mozambique: Health Alliance International Engages Community Health Workers to Conduct TB Screening at Health Facilities | Stop TB Partnership, 2018 |
Funding
[2017-2018] Improving Diagnostic, Linkage to Care, and Routing Reporting for TB, MDR/RR-TB and XDR-TB Patients in Mozambique.
This project received funding support from the Stop TB Partnership.
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Our mission is to promote policies and support programs that strengthen government primary health care and foster social, economic, and health equity for all. Our vision is a just world that promotes health and well-being, including universal access to quality health care.
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Health Alliance International began in 1987 as a US-based international solidarity organization committed to supporting the public sector provision of health care for all. Over 35 years, HAI conducted programs in 17 countries, with flagship programs in Mozambique, Côte d'Ivoire, and Timor-Leste.
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In line with HAI’s commitment to support and strengthen local public health leadership, as of October 2021, HAI fully transitioned global operations and active programs to locally-based, locally-led NGOs. Learn more about this shift toward local autonomy and equity in global health.
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