NTP-BANGLADESH

Quality Assessment of Directly Observed Treatment (DOT) under National TB Control Program (NTP), Bangladesh

Despite the availability of effective technologies for detection and treatment, nearly 9 million contract TB and 2 million people die of it every year worldwide. Bangladesh is one of the 22 countries with high burden of TB. The annual number of new TB cases and TB deaths is estimated at 300,000 and 70,000 respectively. The Government iof Bangladesh is also committed to intensify the DOTS strategy country wide to achieve the global targets of 70% detection and 85% treatment success among the smear positive pulmonary TB cases. The National TB Control Program (NTP) has achieved a remarkable success with almost 100% DOTS coverage, 61% case detection and more than 85% treatment success rate by December 2005. One of the challenges of NTP is to sustain the achievement and improve the quality of care in terms of case detection for attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). To improve the quality of DOT, a thorough program of supervision needs to be instituted at all levels of implementation. Identifying problems of quality is important to set up appropriate programme of supervision by managers, planners and policy makers. This nationwide study will assess the quality of DOT at the upazila level (rural unit) thereby accelerate the progress toward achieving TB control targets and MDGs.

A qualitative cross sectional study will be conducted in all Upzilas of 6 districts. There will be at least one FGD in each upazila. A pre-tested semi-structured Interview schedule will be used for data collection. The findings of this research project will be disseminated through local, national and international workshops/conferences and publications. There will be a final report at the end of the project period. The findings will be presented and discussed in workshops and face-to-face discussions with researchers, programme managers and national and international policy makers.