Health Desk Conducts Health Facility Quarterly Review Meetings for TB Project
By Tulipoka Angellah Chimombo
Through the “Investing for impact against TB/HIV’’ project, the Health Desk of the Diocese of Karonga held health facility quarterly review meetings in a number of facilities from 15 to 23 June, 2018.
The aim of these meeting was to review progress of community TB activities in the revamped and established community sputum collection points (CSCP) in Chitipa and Karonga districts. The review meetings took place at the following health facilities: Wenya, Kameme, Kapenda, Misuku and Kapoka in Chitipa; Iponga, Kasoba, Kaporo, Atupere and Nthora in Karonga.
Specifically, the review focused on progress of activities of volunteers and health workers in target health facilities including successes and challenges faced during the first and second quarters.
A representative of volunteers from each CSCP presented a report highlighting number of households visited, presumptive cases found, and number of sputum samples collected, number of positive and negative cases found and number of cases referred to the health facility.
Further to this, the team discussed at length and suggested solutions to the identified challenges faced by both volunteers and health workers. Finally the members framed an action plan stipulating roles to be taken by each stakeholder i.e. health workers and volunteers. The District TB officer, In-charge of each facility, TB focal person, Microscopist and volunteers from Community Sputum Collection Point (CSCP) attended the meetings.
The activity was a success in that all planned meetings were conducted. It is expected that the discussions and action plan drawn during these review meetings will result in identification of many TB cases and high treatment success rate in communities.