New Article: Quality of TB Services Assessment in the Philippines

An article written by JSI staffers, Quality of TB services assessment: The unique contribution of patient and provider perspectives in identifying and addressing gaps in the quality of TB services, has been published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.

JSI’s Soumya Alva and Suzanne Cloutier collaborated with researchers from USAID and the National Tuberculosis (TB) Program to explore how an assessment of TB services could be used to identify gaps in the quality of care, using the Philippines as a case study.

TB is one of the world’s leading cause of death due to infectious disease, and according to the World Health Organization, the Philippines has historically been a high-burden country. Only 64 percent of an estimated 10 million TB cases are detected and treated each year, leaving 3.6 million people who have TB with low-quality care or no care at all. If services in high-burden countries are to improve, they must be measured in a systematic way.

The authors’ assessment showed a need for improved communication, in both the quality of the information given to patients and in the way that information was delivered. They concluded that high-quality TB service assessments are a standard and flexible way to evaluate TB care at different levels of a health system. So far, these assessments have been conducted in Nigeria and the Philippines, and are planned for Uganda, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. Each country will generate its own lessons and insights on the quality of its TB care to improve services and decrease the burden of the disease.

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Earlier this year, USAID selected JSI to implement the Tuberculosis Implementation Framework Agreement in countries with a high TB burden. The program will strengthen countries’ ownership of and accountability for their own TB care programs in their efforts toward eradication.