Mirjam I. Bakker

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Progress towards the World Health Organization’s End TB Strategy is monitored by assessing tuberculosis (TB) incidence, often derived from TB notification, assuming complete case detection and reporting. This assumption is unlikely to hold in many settings, including European Union (EU) countries.

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In recent years, researchers and decision-makers have increasing access to granular geographically disaggregated health surveillance and programmatic data to improve and optimize public health policy. 

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An Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis of Eleven Projects across Ten High Tuberculosis-Burden Countries Worldwide, non-adherence to tuberculosis (TB) treatment is problematic. Digital adherence technologies (DATs) offer a person-centered approach to support and monitor treatment. This paper explores adherence over time while using DATs using a meta-analysis on anonymized longitudinal adherence data for drug-susceptible TB and […]

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Over the past two decades, there has been a considerable increase in the number of tools to generate, analyse and use data and evidence to support discussion and decision-making by National TB Programmes (NTPs) and their partners. Increasingly, countries are developing more robust national surveillance systems, implementing multiple health surveys, and using data analysis and […]

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The humanitarian crisis in Iraq remains one of the largest and most unstable in the world. In 2014, over 2.5 million civilians were displaced in Iraq; between 2015 and 2017 more than 3 million people continued to be displaced. While health-related research concerning internally displaced persons (IDPs) population has been conducted in many settings, very few have looked […]

Beneficiary Feedback Mechanism (BFM) for Neglected Tropical Disease Programmes To improve the delivery of health interventions people-centred approaches are needed, both to ensure that interventions are accessible and address health care needs appropriately. Feedback of patients and community members can be used to improve programmatic activities and lead to the more equitable and comprehensive distribution […]

CLOSING THE LOOP: LESSONS LEARNED FROM IMPLEMENTATION IN ASCEND LOT 1. To improve the delivery of health interventions, people-centred approaches are needed, both to ensure that interventions are accessible and address health care needs appropriately. There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating that the feedback of patients and community members can improve programmatic activities and lead to the more […]

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In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the Action Framework towards TB elimination in low-incidence countries, and in 2016, the WHO Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe) published the Roadmap to implement the tuberculosis action plan for the WHO European Region 2016-2020: Towards ending TB and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. They outline blueprints to carry out the […]

Community-based active case finding (ACF) is needed to reach key/vulnerable populations with limited access to tuberculosis (TB) care. Published reports of ACF interventions in Indonesia are scarce. We conducted an evaluation of a multicomponent community-based ACF intervention as it scaled from one district to nine in Nias and mainland North Sumatra. Community and health system […]

After many years of TB ‘control’ and incremental progress, the TB community is talking about ending the disease, yet this will only be possible with a shift in the way we approach the TB response. While the Asia-Pacific region has the highest TB burden worldwide, it also has the opportunity to lead the quest to […]

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 In order to effectively combat Tuberculosis, resources to diagnose and treat TB should be allocated effectively to the areas and population that need them. Although a wealth of subnational data on TB is routinely collected to support local planning, it is often underutilized. Therefore, this study uses spatial analytical techniques and profiling to understand and […]

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Assessing the completeness of TB notification to determine whether national data truly reflects the real TB situation in selected EU Member states.

Short Periodical Announcements of Research at KIT This is a short periodical Announcement of Research being done by the Centre of Applied Spatial Epidemiology (Case) team

Global efforts to end the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic by 2030 (SDG3.3) through improved TB case detection and treatment have not been effective to significantly reduce the global burden of the TB epidemic. This study presents an analytical framework to evaluate the use of TB case notification rates (CNR) to monitor and to evaluate TB under-detection […]

Manual This manual is an initiative of the Stop TB partnership, funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and written by the Centre for Applied Spatial Epidemiology (CASE) of KIT Royal Tropical Institute.

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Nationally representative tuberculosis (TB) prevalence surveys provide invaluable empirical measurements of TB burden but are a massive and complex undertaking. Therefore, methods that capitalize on data from these surveys are both attractive and imperative. The aim of this study was to use existing TB prevalence estimates to develop and validate an ecological predictive statistical model […]

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The aim of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) is to suppress plasma human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) viral load (VL) to undetectable levels. The usual median time to achieve full viral suppression is about 100 days. Most HIV patients, both in high-income and in resource-poor countries, also display an immunological response to treatment, measured as an increase […]

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Sub-Saharan Africa has the greatest burden of HIV with 25 million people living with HIV by the end of 2012 . Knowledge of HIV status is imperative for prevention and timely start of HIV care [2–4]. About 30 % of people in sub-Saharan countries have never been tested for HIV. To achieve universal HIV testing, […]

Knowledge of risk factors and their relative importance in different settings is essential to develop effective health education material for the prevention of typhoid. In this study, we examine the effect of household level and individual behavioural risk factors on the risk of typhoid in three Indonesian islands (Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Papua) in the Eastern […]

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It is generally accepted that genetic factors play a role in susceptibility to both leprosy per se and leprosy type, but only few studies have tempted to quantify this. Estimating the contribution of genetic factors to clustering of leprosy within families is difficult since these persons often share the same environment. The first aim of this study […]

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Leprosy is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. Multidrug treatment (MDT) was introduced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1982 and was seen as an instrument for the elimination of leprosy as a public health problem, defined as a national prevalence less than 1/10,000. However, even after 20 years of MDT, case detection […]

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Leprosy is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae and is endemic in many developing countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted the goal of eliminating leprosy as a public health problem by the year 2005, defined as reducing the national prevalence below 1/10 000.1 Until now, the prevalence decreased mainly due to the […]

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Screening of household contacts of tuberculosis (TB) patients is a recommended strategy to improve early case detection. While it has been widely implemented in low prevalence countries, the most optimal protocols for contact investigation in high prevalence, low resource settings is yet to be determined. This study evaluated contact investigation interventions in eleven lower and […]

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