Project Fact Sheets

In 2017, South Africa notified 227,224 tuberculosis (TB) patients against the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) estimations of 332,000 patients in the same year.  This indicates that an estimated 104,776 TB patients were not diagnosed, notified or ever enrolled in the national treatment programmes. These TB patients have in essence been missed by the country’s health system are therefore referred to as “missing TB patients”. The missing TB patients include patients with undiagnosed TB in communities, or those missed by the health system at the time of diagnosis, treatment or reporting. These system constraints pose a major obstacle to achieving the END TB Strategy targets by 2035 and will require further effort and resources. Missing TB patients therefore remain an urgent priority to find and link to proper care.

To improve the quality of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) care and thus treatment success and cure rates, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) developed A Practical Guide to Delivering Essential Supportive Care to Patients with Drug-resistant Tuberculosis. Many countries are already providing some level of patient support services for DR-TB. Studies show that key barriers to completing DR-TB treatment include poor access to health services and insufficient understanding of the disease and its treatment. Factors such as long treatment timelines; serious side effects of medications, including permanent hearing loss; costs associated with accessing healthcare; pressures on employment; emotional and physical isolation of patients, particularly those dealing with co-morbid conditions, particularly HIV infection; mental illness and substance abuse; high levels of stigma and discrimination experienced by patients and their families; and generally poorer outcomes for patients also contribute to poor treatment outcomes. While South Africa has already made tremendous strides in improving access to DR-TB treatment and care, a 57% treatment success rate for MDR-TB in 2016 is still unacceptably low.   

Tuberculosis remains a significant public health concern in resource-poor communities in South Africa.  Communication has a critical role in supporting biomedical responses to the TB epidemic, especially considering assertions that ‘For perhaps the first time, the world is faced with a health threat against which the only effective barrier is not only medical, but also behavioural. 

Regional Training Centres (RTCs) were established in South Africa in 2003 with the mandate to provide relevant and standardized in-service training to build the capacities of health care workers in providing quality care to patients in all health programmes. Since their establishment, the RTCs have grown from strength to strength as the competencies of health care professionals improved. Fifteen years later, the organisation’s mandate is still relevant to all health care programmes, including the tuberculosis (TB) programme.