Tanzania

The ASCENT project in Tanzania

Tanzania is one of the five countries where the ASCENT project is implemented. Over 76 health care facilities in Arusha, Geita, Manyara and Mwanza 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.

Tanzania has a population of 56 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 142,000 people suffered from TB in Tanzania, making the TB incidence rate per 100,000 people 253. An estimated 1,900 people suffered from multidrug resistant TB. The WHO estimates 38,000 people died of TB in Tanzania in 2018.

“For TB treatment which takes a long period to complete, providing patient centered support has been crucial. Digital adherence technologies (DATs) bring a more robust way to empower patients to take control of their treatment while simplifying the healthcare workers monitoring task in real-time. Tanzania is not new in implementation of these DATs. Banking on the exciting accomplishment of the TB Reach funded DAT project, ASCENT Tanzania is looking forward to gathering even more evidence and testing DAT implementation on a larger scale.”

Baraka Onjare, ASCENT project manager in Tanzania