Health extension workers improve tuberculosis case detection and treatment success in southern Ethiopia: a community randomized trial.

ABSTRACT:

Background

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

Methodology/principal finding

We carried out a community-randomized trial in southern Ethiopia from September 2006 to April 2008. Fifty-one kebeles (with a total population of 296, 811) were randomly allocated to intervention and control groups. We trained HEWs in the intervention kebeles on how to ident

SUBMITTER: Datiko DG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2678194 | biostudies-literature | 2009

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature