Experts from Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia have provided country information that will feed in to the process of completing the proposal development for the Cost-Benefit analysis and health impact studies which will be implemented and coordinated with technical support from the East Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC). ECSA-HC also provided support towards the development of a comprehensive, and inclusive plan to introduce client satisfaction tracking in routine TB services and will help to improve service delivery and care for patients.
The information from the countries was collected over a three week process of country consultations from 21 August 2017 with M&E Specialists and country co-investigators for Training Needs Assessment and Health Impact/Cost benefit Analysis Studies. Other country level stakeholders (partners) were also engaged.
During the consultations, countries also received support on issues related to M&E and research in order to strengthen their capacity as per country request. The countries also benefitted from the technical support provided for the baseline assessment initiation which sets the framework and mechanisms for measuring impact and contribution of the SATBHH project interventions.
These activities were conducted in line with one of the key components (component 3) of the Southern Africa Tuberculosis and Health Systems Support (SATBHSS) project support to improve operational research and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in project countries.
The focus of the project is to provide operational research support on priority issues as identified above to strengthen capacity to manage the burden of TB and occupational diseases in the project countries.