TB DOT Tech

Description

At the national level, the rate of patients diagnosed with tuberculosis who do not complete treatment is 5-20%. To these are added those who complete treatment and register therapeutic failure. The factors that lead to this poor adherence are: lack of education and understanding of the importance of healing, low socio-economic level, adverse reactions to treatment, long period of contagion and hospitalization, isolation and stigma associated with the disease, loss of job and decrease in income. The risk associated with poor adherence to treatment is undoubtedly the development of strains resistant to first-line drugs and the increased rate of transmission of the bacillus.

Justification

Numerous assessments by national and international experts, experts from the World Health Organization contain recommendations regarding the undertaking of actions to increase adherence to treatment of patients diagnosed with tuberculosis. The typical scenario is that diagnosed people will be admitted to a specialized hospital and treatment must be started to stop them from being contagious. This stage lasts at least a month. Many of them lose their jobs, their contact with friends, their family tends to avoid them to avoid getting sick. Patients end up giving up treatment, to return to their previous lives, although the bacilli have not been completely destroyed. They often relapse and the stigma continues, leading to hospitalization and treatment again. In this context, the aim of the project is to identify effective approaches and tools to increase the adherence of these patients to treatment, based on evidence and adapted according to the socio-economic profile for a successful implementation of directly observed treatment (DOT).

The overall objective is to increase the efficiency of DOT by applying modern means of communication.

The specific objective is to test the efficiency of an intervention applied over a period of 3-6 months to patients undergoing anti-tuberculosis treatment in the form of a videophone observation method of treatment administration.

The target group of the project is made up of people selected according to the project methodology from among patients diagnosed with tuberculosis, patients from the records of the pneumology dispensaries in Bucharest, sector 4 and Mogoșești, Giurgiu and who continue their outpatient treatment for a period of 3-6 months until the completion of the complete scheme.