Private Provider’s Journey Towards Finding Missing TB Cases– Case of Mwatate Community Hospital, Embakasi

Mwatate community hospital is based at Tassia estate (densely populated area) adjacent to Muhindi Mweusi supermarket in Embakasi East Sub County in Nairobi County. The proprietor Ms. Margaret is an experienced nurse having served as nurse at various positions decided to put her wealth of experience into private practice.
The facility is operational in 24 hours offering various outpatient services; immunization, antenatal, postnatal, family planning, laboratory, daycare services and circumcision. The facility has a monthly workload of approximately 600 patients, though before Covid-19 pandemic the workload was slightly higher.

The facility was among 45 medical clinics trained in March 2020 by PS Kenya through support of Global fund, the providers were trained on integrated TB care management targeting unengaged private providers in Embakasi East Sub County. The training utilized the national NTLD-P recommended curriculum. The facility sent one participant a clinician for the training. Just like many private health facilities the clinician left for greener pastures less than two weeks after the training. The facility staffs had to undergo on job training into TB management in the month of April 2020 to enable continuity of the TB active case finding. The facility was provided with TB screening tools, cooler boxes, falcon tubes among other supplies and continues to receive regular support from the Sub county team for capacity building.

Results:
On average 80 to 90% of the patients/clients visiting the facility are screened for TB on monthly basis. Because of great commitment by the facility in TB management the facility was upgraded into TB treatment and has since notified a total of six TB patients by the end of September and all started on TB treatment at the facility. Contacts tracing and testing has also been carried out with one child on IPT. The child happens to be under 5-year contact to parents who are both on TB treatment at the facility. The two parents were diagnosed with TB one month apart at the facility with the mother being a contact to the father who happened to be the first patient diagnosed for TB at the facility. The facility look forward to ensuring 100% TB screening among its clients/patients and realizing 100% treatment success rate among TB patients enrolled at the facility.

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