Feasibility of a short message service (SMS) intervention to deliver tuberculosis testing results in peri-urban and rural Uganda.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Pre-treatment loss to follow-up is common for patients diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) in high-burden countries. Delivering test results by Short-Messaging-Service (SMS) is increasingly being considered as a solution, but there is limited information about its feasibility as a public health tool in low resourced settings.

Objective

We sought to assess the feasibility of utilizing SMS technology to deliver TB test results during routine TB diagnostic evaluation in Uganda.

Methods

We conducted a single arm interventional pilot study at four community health centers in Uganda that referred sputum samples to a district hospital for GeneXpert-MTB/RIF (Xpert) testing (Cepheid, USA). Using existing GxAlert-software (SystemOne,USA), we set up an automated SMS plat

SUBMITTER: Babirye D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6830162 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature