After 13 years of collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of Population, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has concluded our tuberculosis (TB) project in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
MSF’s work in Dushanbe focused on detecting TB cases through improved diagnostic techniques, tracing contacts, and treating children and incarcerated people with drug-resistant TB (DR-TB). Our teams aimed to improve TB care by empowering patients, promoting self-administered treatment, educating patients about health, and engaging the community. Generally, there was a lack of knowledge regarding effective diagnosis and treatment of DR-TB in children and adolescents. We wanted to demonstrate that provision of care for children is feasible, and that DR-TB can be successfully diagnosed and cured.
Key to the programme was the introduction of person-centred approach through:
- contact tracing, especially in children, to stop the spread of infection by identifying and testing people who have had recent contact with someone diagnosed with TB;
- support to survivors of domestic violence with a holistic patient-centred approach;
- compounding drugs to make formulations for children at a time when paediatric formulations were limited globally;
- providing mental health and psychosocial support, including counselling.
We reflect on the project’s successes with the below timeline.
2011: MSF and the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of Population (MoHSPP) team up for a groundbreaking TB programme offering lifesaving treatment to children with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in the country for the first time.
2013: For the first time in Tajikistan, MSF, in collaboration with the MoHSPP, diagnoses TB in children using sputum induction, a highly effective diagnostic method. MSF even sets up a special room for this purpose and provides training for the staff working at the state health facilities.
“It is quite difficult to collect sputum from children, especially those under five years old, as they cannot spit out their sputum,” said Surayo Abdulkhamidova, MSFs’ infection, prevention and control manager. Sputum induction simplifies this procedure. “The child inhales a special vapour,” said Abdulkhamidova. “Within 10-15 minutes, sputum begins to produce. This sputum is easily and non-traumatically collected into a special sterile container and sent to the laboratory.”
Fonte original msf.org
