The Uganda Tuberculosis Surveillance Project (UTBSP) is a collaboration between the Uganda Ministry of Health Management Information Services (HMIS), the University of California, San Francisco, and the Makerere University-University of California, San Francisco Research Collaboration (MU-UCSF). Similar to sibling projects in malaria and HIV, UTBSP is using a novel disease surveillance system and robust information technology to promote the use of reliable data on TB suspect evaluation and diagnosis for several complementary purposes:

• Quality improvement at individual sites
• Regional and national public health TB surveillance activities
• Evaluation of novel interventions to improve TB case detection and treatment referral

 

Individual patient data on cough, AFB smear microscopy, TB diagnoses, and TB treatment referrals are captured on over 200,000 patient encounters a year at selected government health clinics and hospitals. All data is updated monthly at a publicly accessible web portal (http://utbsp.muucsf.org/). The web portal allows users to review simple indicators relevant to TB care, as well as generate their own measures.

In 2009, we are carrying out two major research projects in implementation science:

1. Data collection: Howdo novel data collection activities involving the entire health care team compare with traditional laboratory surveillance activities for measuring the number of TB cases identified?

2. Adherence to guidelines: How well do sites perform in TB diagnosis and evaluation relative to the Uganda National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Programme guidelines and the International Standards for Tuberculosis Care?