The ASCENT project in Ethiopia
Ethiopia is one of the five countries where the ASCENT project is implemented. Over 80 health care facilities in the regions Addis Ababa and Oromia are participating in the project. Patient and health care workers will make use of digital adherence technologies to support patients taking their TB treatment at home. The first patients will be enrolled mid 2020. The project aims to reach 5,000 TB patients in Ethiopia in four years.
Ethiopia has a population of 109 million people and is one of the 30 high burden TB countries in the world, as listed by the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2018 an estimated 165,000 people suffered from TB in Ethiopia, making the TB incidence rate per 100,000 people 151. An estimated 1,600 people suffered from multidrug resistant TB. The WHO estimates 23,980 people died of TB in Ethiopia in 2018. At KNCV, we find this unacceptable as with the right treatment, TB can be cured. One of the goals of the ASCENT project is to increase the number of patients that complete their treatment successfully.
news & Stories from Ethiopia
ASCENT Ethiopia conducts review meeting to improve assistance for tuberculosis patients
ASCENT Ethiopia conducted a one-day review meeting in Bishoftu town Gold Mark Hotel for better implementation of the project.
Devex interview about digital adherence technologies: “We hope that our research will contribute to the WHO policy”
Over the years, digital technologies have been introduced to improve patients’ adherence to tuberculosis (TB) treatment, but with little research showing how feasible these technologies are.
Research begins into new digital tools to support patients and healthcare workers through tuberculosis treatment
A large global study which aims to determine if digital adherence technologies can provide more patient-friendly approaches to improve tuberculosis (TB) treatment outcomes launches in Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Africa, the Philippines and Ukraine, as part of the ASCENT project.
“ASCENT study might change policy of TB treatment across the world”
As the main research phase of the innovative ASCENT project kicks off, we asked the main researchers Jens Levy, Katherine Fielding and Amare Tadesse to elaborate on the study. Why are they so determined to generate scientific evidence on the use of digital adherence technologies for tuberculosis (TB) treatment?