Tuberculosis (TB) screening system integration within Rwanda’s RapidSMS health system

Abstract

Sustainable development of a country is basically built on its healthy population. To provide the worthy healthcare requires a well structured health system, strategies and measures on pandemic, endemic as well as epidemic diseases that are major causes of mortally and morbidity of the community and consequently alienates the socio-economic situation of the country. Recently, the Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program reinforced by the introduction of mobile health application technology used by community health workers, commonly known as RapidSMS has significantly reduced the prevalence of pregnant women and infant deaths. The RapidSMS-MCH system was customized to allow interactive communication between a community health workers (CHW)following mother-infant pairs in their community with a national centralized database and the health facility and in case of an emergency alert, the ambulance driver. Tuberculosis as the second most common cause of death from infectious disease after HIV, with several absolute new cases of infection in the community, should be addressed the same way with much effort as furnished in preventing maternal and child deaths with the use of mHealth system to early report critical cases for emergency healthcare. People living with HIV, young children, elderly people, people with diabetes, and other groups who have compromised immune systems face a high risk of poor outcomes from TB treatment, including relapse and death. Treating only one group of patients looks inexpensive in the short run, but will prove disastrous for all in the long run. Despite measures and procedures used for TB screening, the disease still killing the population. However, there is a need of an effective and active screening system to help community health workers to immediately report the TB cases early screened positive at community level for rapid repost from hospital or health facility level. This research aims at designing a mHealth system to be integrated within an existing RapidSMSMCH system as new tool for fast and mobile based systematic TB screening system at community level. This will help to avoid delays for TB suspected cases and reducing bottlenecks in communication associated with other TB cases like pregnant women and children; and document challenges.