Archive for May, 2009

Better tuberculosis control

Friday, May 8th, 2009

One of the main strategies to control tuberculosis is to find and treat people with active disease. Unfortunately, the case detection rates remain low in many countries. Thus, we need interventions to find and treat sufficient number of patients to control tuberculosis.

We investigated whether involving health extension workers (HEWs: trained community health workers) in tuberculosis control improved smear-positive case detection and treatment success rates in southern Ethiopia.

We carried out a community-randomized trial in southern Ethiopia. Involving community health workers in tuberculosis control improved the case detection and treatment success rates for smear-positive patients and for women in particular.

We think our approach improved service access, and recommend this could be applied in settings with low health service coverage and a shortage of health workers.
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Datiko DG, Lindtjørn B (2009) Health Extension Workers Improve Tuberculosis Case Detection and Treatment Success in Southern Ethiopia: A Community Randomized Trial. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5443. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005443

Posted in Health system, Tuberculosis | No Comments »

Entomology

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

Understanding the mosquitoes is important for malaria control. As part of our research in Ethiopia, we collect larvae, pupae and adult mosquitoes.For example in our study area Chano, near Arba Minch in south Ethiopia, Fekadu Massebo does this every month. This is done through light traps, in-door spraying, and in pit shelters, and from breeding sites.

We do this to study species composition, adult density, feeding and resting habits, parasite infection and infectivity, longevity, and seasonality. By doing this we will find out the monthly, seasonal and annual entomological infections rates (EIR), and observe possible associations between EIR and disease burden.

Recently, we also visited the Gidole Highlands further south. Our question was if malaria transmission takes place at higher altitudes. Information from the hospital suggest that people living at an altitude of 2200 m, get malaria. We found many anopheles larvae and pupae. We shall now analyse them at Arba Minch University, and see if we can identify anopheles species that transmit malaria.

Posted in Malaria | No Comments »