Improving Urban Access to Tuberculosis Services in Pakistan
KIT’s Centre for Applied Spatial Epidemiology (CASE) supported Pakistan’s National TB Programme in the collection of data on TB diagnostic and treatment centers in Khairpur and Islamabad Capital Territory.
Summary
A number of countries that attended the Bangkok workshop on the KIT’s MATCH Approach to tuberculosis (TB) care subsequently requested continued support to either a) further analyse their subnational data or b) collect additional data to inform their subnational tuberculosis program planning. For example, in 2017 KIT’s Centre for Applied Spatial Epidemiology (CASE) supported Pakistan’s National TB Programme in the collection of GPS coordinate data of TB diagnostic and treatment centers in Khairpur and Islamabad Capital Territory. This GPS data was then analysed with the corresponding facility-level data and district-level demographic data to measure access to TB diagnostic and treatment services.
This work enables planning for better service delivery in areas where the need is high and resources are limited. The analysis of the data combined: availability and types of human resources trained to provide TB services, availability of diagnostic machines and supplies, laboratory performance, and facility catchment area population. This helps to subsequently determine which facilities should receive more training, more equipment, or may serve the community better through increased screening and testing. Data collection is complete and analysis began in early 2018.
