National Tuberculosis Control Programme evaluation in Pakistan

KIT Biomedical Research (Royal Tropical Institute) is involved in a third party evaluation of the National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTP) in Pakistan. A report of the findings will be published soon.

From September 2010 until May 2011, an international team performed the first third party evaluation of the National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTP) in Pakistan. KIT Biomedical Research was represented by Pauline Scheelbeek.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health challenge in Pakistan; Pakistan ranks 8th among the 22 high-burden countries in the world. An estimated 300,000 people in Pakistan acquire TB annually. These numbers vary substantially over various provinces and regions; the highest burden is found in the Northern Areas, an autonomous region in the North East of Pakistan.

National successes in the fight against TB
Pakistan has booked considerable success in the fight against TB. The NTP is responsible for developing national guidelines and policies for implementation of TB control measures. The programme was successful in improving Pakistan’s TB Case Detection Rate from 70 to 74 per cent between 2007 and 2009. Furthermore, an increase in Treatment Success Rate from 82 to 91 per cent was seen between 2005 and 2009 after the treatment programme Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS), thanks to which intake of medication is supervised and followed, was introduced in 2000.

Regional differences
From area to area, substantial differences in programme performance are found. This was the direct reason to request a third party evaluation to identify and evaluate major strengths and weaknesses of the NTP. Based on these findings the evaluation team formulated recommendations for the regions where the programme was less successful, using the strengths of the programme in the areas where the results were good.

Evaluation report
The report will be available after the summer. The recommendations were given in the area of financial management, logistics and procurement, treatment, diagnostics, human resources, and advocacy, communication and social mobilization activities.

The international evaluation team consisted of seven members, and a field team of twenty members. Interviews, questionnaires and observations were conducted at all administrative levels (from national to community level).

• Tags
:
• diagnostics |
• disease control |
• epidemiology |
• health |
• health systems |
• infectious diseases |
• management |
• pharmaceuticals |
• research |
• tuberculosis

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