The Evaluation Project of Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) in Maha Sarakham, 2010

Abstract

The main objectives of the evaluation project of Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) in Maha Sarakham in the 2010 were to evaluate: 1) the effectiveness of DOT in Maha Sarakham in the year 2010, 2) the knowledge of the village health volunteers on the disease and DOT, 3) the effectiveness of medication directions of the village health volunteers. Data were collected at 2 phases. The first phase was finding and collecting the data and treatment of 555 TB patients using the registration/ report data TB 01, TB 03, TB 07, TB 07/1 and TB 08 during October 1, 2010 - September 30, 2011. The second phase was carried out with 161 village health volunteers during January 20- May 8, 2012 using the questionnaires and tests. For the total of 162 registered TB patients in 2010, data were collected by using questionnaires. Descriptive statistics: frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used in data analysis.

The results of project evaluation showed that. The rate of active case finding was 93.9 percent, the success rate was 87.2 percent and the default rate was 3.6 percent of the registered TB patients. The village health volunteers could pass the criterion about knowledge and understanding by 71.4 percent. The default appointment with the doctors was 6.2 percent. The proportion of the TB patients who followed the advice of the village health volunteers was 84.0 percent. There were 6 indicators of this evaluation project of DOT in Maha Sarakham. Only 4 out of 6 indicators were achieved and the other 2 failing indicators were the knowledge and understanding of the village health volunteers and the default appointment of the doctors.

The feedbacks from the evaluation project for the effectiveness of TB control are: village health volunteers should have regular training, close relatives of those sputum positive TB patients should be identified, there should be Mr. TB in each village with clear assignment of role and duty, the home visit of TB patients should be integrated with other home visit of chronic patients and the health officials should train village health volunteers in home visit of the TB patients.