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S/r Hana Abera is TB/HIV team leader at Akaki Health Center in Addis Ababa. A team of experts from the national TBL program have visited the health center in April 2022 while they were conducting TBL catch up campaign to find missed TB cases. Akaki is one of the 240 Woredas selected all over the country to conduct TB catchup campaign. The aim of the campaign is to find missed TB cases in the community due to COVID-19 pandemic, conflict and displacement to catch the national Target. The campaign was organized with financial support from the Global Fund COVID-19 mitigation grant. The campaign relied on retrospective contact tracing of pulmonary TB patients registered in the past 2 years, TB high risk groups including displaced people, urban slum dwellers, mining communities and the like. The first strategy didn’t work well in Addis Ababa as tracking of index TB cases was a challenge.    

S/r Hana and the HC management team decided to focus on other strategies, like conducting active TB case search among urban slum dwellers, factory workers and homeless communities which is relatively common in that area. About 3000 more TB cases were identified in the community outreach TB screening campaign nationwide. Among the total TB cases identified by the campaign in the catchment of Akaki health center, 3 homeless physically challenged bacteriologically positive TB cases were refused to start their treatment during pre-treatment patient counseling. The TB Clinic staff and the health center team was shocked by the news.  Read more.