Tuberculosis is a preventable and curable infectious disease cause by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Despite being a preventable and curable disease, it remains the leading cause of death globally from a single infectious agent. Zambia continues to be among the top 30 high TB burden countries in the world. TB active case finding strategies in Zambia both at a community and facility level has improved TB notifications. In Zambia, the screening services for TB, HIV and COVID-19 are well integrated within the health system with SmartCare (an electronic database used in many health facilities across the country). However, for other non-communicable diseases, there is a delay in seeking health services thereby presenting to the health facility when the disease process has progressed. This limits any use of preventative services which are available in most health centres.
Ubumi Bwandi aimed to screen all at risk individuals in this community for non-communicable and communicable diseases. We provided community-wide integrated screening for common diseases, including TB, in Mapalo community in Ndola, Zambia. The overall aim of the project was to improve the health of the population by identifying individuals with undiagnosed TB, and other chronic conditions, as well as providing health information, multi-disease screening and preventive therapies. This project was conducted in partnership with the Ministry of Health through the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Programme, the Ndola District Health Office, and Mapalo Clinic in Ndola. The project was funded by the Stop TB Partnership under TB REACH wave 10.
We renovated an old unutilized abattoir in Mapalo and turned it into a vibrant community hub for wellness and prevention activities and setup X-Ray machines at the hub and Mapalo clinic. The community was involved in the choosing the location of the hub and the design of the project logo and key community stakeholders such as the neighbourhood health committee (NHC) and community advisory board (CAB) were continuously engaged throughout the life of the project.
We used a combination of symptom screening and chest x-ray with CAD4TB software to screen community members for TB.
After 1 year of implementation, we had screened 47% of the adult population in Mapalo for TB and other diseases such as cervical cancer, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and HIV. Other activities conducted included sports (e.g. football and netball), gardening at the hub by community members, outreach activities to screen community members who reside far from the community hub, and peer monitoring of project activities by community members.
The findings of Ubumi Bwandi were shared with stakeholders in October 2024. Writing of manuscripts from Ubumi Bwandi data is currently underway.
