Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on TB and HIV Programme Services in Selected Health Facilities in Lilongwe, Malawi: Operational Research in Real Time.
Pruthu ThekkurHannock TweyaSam PhiriJames MpungaThokozani KaluaAjay M V KumarSrinath SatyanarayanaHemant Deepak ShewadeMohammed KhogaliRony ZachariahI D RusenSelma Dar BergerAnthony David HarriesPublished in: Tropical medicine and infectious disease (2021)
When the COVID-19 pandemic was announced in March 2020, there was concern that TB and HIV programme services in Malawi would be severely affected. We set up real-time monthly surveillance of TB and HIV activities in eight health facilities in Lilongwe to see if it was possible to counteract the anticipated negative impact on TB case detection and treatment and HIV testing. Aggregate data were collected monthly during the COVID-19 period (March 2020-February 2021) using an EpiCollect5 application and compared with monthly data collected during the pre-COVID-19 period (March 2019-February 2020); these reports were sent monthly to programme directors. During COVID-19, there was an overall decrease in persons presenting with presumptive pulmonary TB (45.6%), in patients registered for TB treatment (19.1%), and in individuals tested for HIV (39.0%). For presumptive TB, children and females were more affected, but for HIV testing, adults and males were more affected. During COVID-19, the TB treatment success rate (96.1% in pre-COVID-19 and 96.0% during COVID-19 period) and referral of HIV-positive persons to antiretroviral therapy (100% in pre-COVID-19 and 98.6% during COVID-19 period) remained high and largely unchanged. Declining trends in TB and HIV case detection were not redressed despite real-time monthly surveillance.
Keyphrases
- hiv testing
- hiv positive
- men who have sex with men
- antiretroviral therapy
- mycobacterium tuberculosis
- coronavirus disease
- hiv infected
- sars cov
- human immunodeficiency virus
- healthcare
- public health
- hiv aids
- south africa
- hiv infected patients
- primary care
- mental health
- study protocol
- machine learning
- ejection fraction
- randomized controlled trial
- hepatitis c virus
- clinical trial
- electronic health record
- health information
- label free
- health promotion