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.