Crossing the Last Mile of TB Care in Rural Southern Madagascar: A Multistakeholder Initiative

ABSTRACT

Despite a free TB care policy, access to TB care in rural Madagascar is limited due to a markedly underfunded health care system. The World Health Organization estimated the yearly TB incidence in Madagascar at 238 cases per 100,000 people in 2020; only half of the patients with TB are being notified and treated. We describe the development, implementation, and lessons learned of an intervention to improve TB care services in a remote, rural district in southern Madagascar. We involved national, regional, and local stakeholders in assessing the multifaceted challenges in a remote, rural area and codesigning activities to address them. The overarching principles of the intervention were to (1) promote national TB guidelines, (2) build on best practices, and (3) prioritize low-cost activities to enable scale-up. An in-depth assessment of challenges in accessing and delivering TB care resulted in the following prioritization of activities: (1) fostering community engagement, (2) decentralizing service provision, (3) improving quality of care, (4) providing nutritional support, and (5) ensuring staff support and supervision. The intervention was launched in September 2019 and is ongoing as of October 2022. During mobile TB clinics conducted between September 2019 and December 2020, 4,982 presumptive patients were screened and 1,706 (34.2%) have been diagnosed with TB. Based on 2010–2020 official TB notification data, we calculated trend-adjusted additional TB notifications during the intervention, resulting in a 2.6-fold increase in cases in 2019–2020. The intervention district’s TB notification rate increased from 178 cases per 100,000 people in 2018 to 424 cases per 100,000 people in 2020. Involving stakeholders from all levels of care was perceived as a key to success. The unexpected increase in the number of patients with TB in the intervention district overburdened the current paper-based TB notification system and emphasized the need for expanded diagnostics and social support services.