The Impact of Community Outreaches on Tuberculosis Case Notification in Sardauna Local Government Area, Taraba State, Nigeria

Background: According to the Global TB report 2019, a total of 7 million new TB cases were notified globally in 2018, out of an estimated 10 million cases, resulting in a gap of 3 million between the incident and notified TB cases, with Nigeria contributing 12% of such a gap. To address this gap, the WHO Nigeria country office, in collaboration with NTP and support from USAID engaged TB surveillance officers in 12 priority States in 2018. Since then, several active TB case finding interventions have been implemented in collaboration with the TB control programs of the affected states. This study examined the impact of one of such interventions in Taraba State, Northeastern Nigeria. Method: Retrospective review of the impact of targeted community TB outreaches in Sardauna Local Government Area (LGA) of Taraba State, Northeastern Nigeria, from 1 st June to 31 st December 2019. Results: Independent samples of t-test and Levene's test for equality of variance showed a statistically significant increase (p < 0.05) in the number of confirmed TB cases notified by the health facilities in Sardauna LGA. Thus, this intervention was impactful in increasing the number of notified confirmed TB cases and therefore should be expanded to other hard to reach (HTR) communities in the state and the country at large. Conclusion: The intervention can increase the number of confirmed TB notifications in deprived and hard to reach communities thereby reducing the huge gap between the incident and notified TB cases in the LGA, state and country.