Evolution of the health sector and tuberculosis control in Brazil

Strategic analysis of tuberculosis prevention and control actions in Brazil and Ethiopia: one size fits all?

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed at conducting a strategic analysis of Tuberculosis prevention and control actions in Brazil and Ethiopia, looking at the potential of directly observed treatment short-course strategy (DOTS) and community DOTS in both countries.

METHODS

Literature review was conducted using PubMed, Medline-Ovid, EMBASE, and SCIELO databases. The reviewed terms were Tuberculosis, prevention and control and Brazil (or Brasil) or Ethiopia (or Etiopia). Study's eligibility included article's title or abstract in English or Portuguese and comprised the following Tuberculosis policy components: management; care; communication, and social mobilization; training and professional development; epidemiological surveillance, and monitoring and evaluation. The study identified, compared, and analyzed the challenges and recommendations reported in the literature.

RESULTS

Although DOTS was not able to address all the difficulties regarding Tuberculosis control and prevention, it contributes to overcome challenges identified in the literature review. Decentralizing DOTS in Ethiopia and implementing DOTS in Brazil were key recommendations to overcome problems of access and treatment default.

CONCLUSIONS

DOTS and Community DOTS cannot solve every identified Tuberculosis challenge, but together they complement each other. Both strategies need to be tailored to site's challenges.

Decentralized control of human visceral leishmaniasis in endemic urban areas of Brazil: a literature review

OBJECTIVES

Human migration and concomitant HIV infections are likely to bring about major changes in the epidemiology of some parasitic infections in Brazil. Human visceral leishmaniasis (HVL) control is particularly fraught with intricacies. It is against a backdrop of decentralized health care that the complex HVL control initiatives are brought to bear. This comprehensive review aims to explore the obstacles facing decentralized HVL control in urban endemic areas in Brazil.

METHOD

A literature search was carried out in December 2015 by means of three databases: MEDLINE, Google Scholar, and Web of Science.

RESULTS

Although there have been many strides that have been made in elucidating the eco-epidemiology of Leishmania infantum, which forms the underpinnings of the national control program, transmission risk factors for HVL are still insufficiently elucidated in urban settings. Decentralized HVL epidemiological surveillance and control for animal reservoirs and vectors may compromise sustainability. In addition, it may hamper timely human HVL case management. With the burgeoning of the HIV-HVL co-infection, the potential human transmission may be underestimated.

CONCLUSION

HVL is a disease with focal transmission at a critical juncture, which warrants that the bottlenecks facing the control program within contexts of decentralized healthcare systems be taken into account. In addition, HIV-driven HVL epidemics may substantially increase the transmission potential of the human reservoir. Calculating the basic reproductive number to fine-tune interventions will have to take into consideration the specific socio-economic development context.

An interdependent analytic approach to explaining the evolution of NGOs, social movements, and biased government response to AIDS and tuberculosis in Brazil

The politics of government response to health epidemics is a new area of scholarly research. Nevertheless, to date scholars have not considered how social science theory can be used and interdependently linked to provide a more thorough discussion of civil societal and national government response to different types of health epidemics. Introducing what I call an interdependent analytic framework of government response to epidemics, this article illustrates how social science theories can be interdependently linked and applied to help explain the evolutionary role of interest groups and social movements in response to AIDS and tuberculosis in Brazil, and when and why the government eventually responded more aggressively to AIDS but not tuberculosis. Evidence from Brazil suggests that the policy influence of interest groups and social movements evolves over time and is more influential after the national government implements new policies; moreover, this response is triggered by the rise of international pressures and government reputation building, not civil society. I highlight new areas of research that the framework provides and provide examples of how this approach can help explain civil societal and biased government responses to different types of epidemics in other nations.

The effects of Global Fund financing on health governance in Brazil

Objectives

The impact of donors, such as national government (bi-lateral), private sector, and individual financial (philanthropic) contributions, on domestic health policies of developing nations has been the subject of scholarly discourse. Little is known, however, about the impact of global financial initiatives, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, on policies and health governance of countries receiving funding from such initiatives.

Methods

This study employs a qualitative methodological design based on a single case study: Brazil. Analysis at national, inter-governmental and community levels is based on in-depth interviews with the Global Fund and the Brazilian Ministry of Health and civil societal activists. Primary research is complemented with information from printed media, reports, journal articles, and books, which were used to deepen our analysis while providing supporting evidence.

Results

Our analysis suggests that in Brazil, Global Fund financing has helped to positively transform health governance at three tiers of analysis: the national-level, inter-governmental-level, and community-level. At the national-level, Global Fund financing has helped to increased political attention and commitment to relatively neglected diseases, such as tuberculosis, while harmonizing intra-bureaucratic relationships; at the inter-governmental-level, Global Fund financing has motivated the National Tuberculosis Programme to strengthen its ties with state and municipal health departments, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs); while at the community-level, the Global Fund’s financing of civil societal institutions has encouraged the emergence of new civic movements, participation, and the creation of new municipal participatory institutions designed to monitor the disbursement of funds for Global Fund grants.

Conclusions

Global Fund financing can help deepen health governance at multiple levels. Future work will need to explore how the financing of civil society by the Global Fund and other donors influence policy agenda-setting and institutional innovations for increased civic participation in health governance and accountability to citizens.

A dynamic analysis of tuberculosis dissemination to improve control and surveillance

Background

Detailed analysis of the dynamic interactions among biological, environmental, social, and economic factors that favour the spread of certain diseases is extremely useful for designing effective control strategies. Diseases like tuberculosis that kills somebody every 15 seconds in the world, require methods that take into account the disease dynamics to design truly efficient control and surveillance strategies. The usual and well established statistical approaches provide insights into the cause-effect relationships that favour disease transmission but they only estimate risk areas, spatial or temporal trends. Here we introduce a novel approach that allows figuring out the dynamical behaviour of the disease spreading. This information can subsequently be used to validate mathematical models of the dissemination process from which the underlying mechanisms that are responsible for this spreading could be inferred.

Methodology/Principal Findings

The method presented here is based on the analysis of the spread of tuberculosis in a Brazilian endemic city during five consecutive years. The detailed analysis of the spatio-temporal correlation of the yearly geo-referenced data, using different characteristic times of the disease evolution, allowed us to trace the temporal path of the aetiological agent, to locate the sources of infection, and to characterize the dynamics of disease spreading. Consequently, the method also allowed for the identification of socio-economic factors that influence the process.

Conclusions/Significance

The information obtained can contribute to more effective budget allocation, drug distribution and recruitment of human skilled resources, as well as guiding the design of vaccination programs. We propose that this novel strategy can also be applied to the evaluation of other diseases as well as other social processes.

Resistance and renewal: health sector reform and Cambodia's national tuberculosis programme

Following the destruction of Cambodia's health infrastructure during the Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979) and the subsequent decade of United Nations sanctions, international development assistance has focused on reconstructing the country's health system. The recognition of Cambodia's heavy burden of tuberculosis (TB) and the lapse of TB control strategies during the transition to democracy prompted the national tuberculosis programme's relaunch in the mid-1990s as WHO-backed health sector reforms were introduced. This paper examines the conflicts that arose between health reforms and TB control programmes due to their different operating paradigms. It also discusses how these tensions were resolved during introduction of the DOTS strategy for TB treatment.

Indicadores relacionados ao retardo no diagnóstico e na instituição das precauções para aerossóis entre pacientes com tuberculose pulmonar bacilífera em um hospital terciário

INTRODUÇÃO: Há risco de transmissão de tuberculose em instituições de cuidados à saúde. OBJETIVO: Avaliar indicadores relacionados ao risco de transmissão entre pacientes com tuberculose pulmonar bacilífera atendidos em um hospital universitário. MÉTODO: Estudo retrospectivo, descritivo, de 01/1997 a 09/1999. Foram estudados os pacientes internados com tuberculose pulmonar bacilífera no Hospital de Clínicas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Foram avaliados três intervalos: entre admissão e coleta da pesquisa de BAAR no escarro; entre admissão e instituição das precauções para aerossóis; entre coleta do escarro e início do tratamento. RESULTADOS: Foram incluídos 63 casos. Associação ao vírus da imunodeficiência humana ocorreu em 31,7%. Quarenta pacientes foram admitidos pelo pronto-socorro (63,5%). Suspeita de tuberculose esteve presente na admissão em 42 pacientes (66,7%). O intervalo entre admissão e coleta de escarro excedeu 12 horas em 27,5% dos casos admitidos pelo pronto-socorro e em 30,4% dos internados nas enfermarias (p = 0,803). Retardo no isolamento respiratório ocorreu em 31 casos (49,2%). Os fatores associados ao retardo de isolamento foram ausência de tuberculose no diagnóstico de admissão (p < 0,000) e carga bacilar mais baixa no escarro (p = 0,032). Infecção pelo vírus da imunodeficiência humana (p = 0,530), enfermaria de hospitalização (p = 0,284) e presença de co-morbidades (p = 0,541) não foram associados ao retardo de isolamento. O intervalo entre coleta e início de tratamento foi superior a 24 horas em 15,9% dos casos. CONCLUSÃO: Observou-se retardo de isolamento em muitos casos. São necessárias políticas de educação continuada, sobretudo nas áreas de maior risco.

Tuberculose no Brasil: construção de um sistema de vigilância de base territorial

OBJETIVO: Analisar a ocorrência da tuberculose, identificando variáveis definidoras de situações coletivas de risco que determinam sua distribuição espacial, como subsídio à implantação de um sistema de vigilância de base territorial para controle da tuberculose. MÉTODOS: Estudo ecológico realizado no período 1996-2000, em Olinda, município da região metropolitana do Recife, PE. A mediana do número de casos de tuberculose, notificados por setor censitário, serviu como ponto de corte para caracterização das áreas de alta e baixa transmissão. Um modelo de regressão logística, utilizando essa variável resposta, permitiu estimar as "odds-ratio" de algumas variáveis socioeconômicas do Censo Demográfico de 2000 e de outras co-variáveis relacionadas com a transmissão da doença. RESULTADOS: A tuberculose em Olinda apresentou altas taxas de incidência no período (média de 111 casos por 100.000 habitantes). Verificou-se que são significativamente associadas à ocorrência da tuberculose, as variáveis: média de moradores por domicílio (OR=2,2; IC 95%: 1,3; 3,6); existência de famílias com mais de um caso no período (OR=5,1; IC 95%: 2,3; 11,3); e presença de casos de retratamento (OR=6,8; IC 95%: 2,7; 17,1). Setores censitários com a ocorrência desses dois últimos eventos concentraram 45% do total de casos do período, representando apenas 28% da população do município. CONCLUSÕES: Duas das três variáveis explicativas associadas a maiores taxas de incidência da doença são informações que devem ser monitorizadas, em nível local, pelo sistema de vigilância da tuberculose. O simples mapeamento de casos de retratamento e de domicílios com ocorrência de repetidos casos, permitiria refinar o foco de atenção em micro-áreas prioritárias para intervenções intensivas, como forma de enfrentar o problema da tuberculose.