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.

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