By Michael Gwarisa
As a young person who has survived Tuberculosis (TB), Munyaradzi Saruchera (27) from Dzivarasekwa in Harare now wants to make an impact in Zimbabwe’s TB response.
He volunteers as a TB champion under the Stop TB Partnership Zimbabwe. His roles encompass getting feedback from the TB community regarding access to services, monitoring TB patients, and following them up to check if they adhere to medications. He also monitors the availability of TB services and commodities such as TB medicines, and screening services.
However, collecting data and feedback regarding issues affecting TB survivors and patients in their quest to access services used to be a challenge for Munyaradzi, and other TB champions. This was mainly due to a myriad of factors chief among them being the lack of systematic data collection and implementation of relevant programs in affected communities.
To Download One Impact App, Click Here
To bridge the gap, through funding from the Stop TB Partnership and Technical Support from the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC), the Jointed Hands Welfare Organisation in Zimbabwe (JHWO) is implementing the rollout of the “One Impact” mobile application. The App is a community-led monitoring (CLM) solution process through which people affected by TB in particular Key and Vulnerable Populations are empowered to meaningfully engage and be part of the TB discourse.
This a good Application with comprehensive information about TB,” says Munyaradzi as he browses through the One Impact App.
“I have used the App and it has made my advocacy work easy. It is a good advocacy tool for both healthcare workers and patients. You find that once you register on the app, you get timely updates and feedback regarding any issue you might be facing. This has helped reduce the defaulter rate among TB patients as the App links them to the nearest health facilities for care.”
He added that the app has empowered him with knowledge and information regarding TB and he sues this information when they conduct community dialogues as TB survivors and champions.
“Vanhu vanototi ndine information asi pamwe ndinenge ndatomboverenga pa Oneimpact! (People believe I am very knowledgeable about TB yet I would have just read stuff on the One Impact app,” added Munyaradzi.
One Impact is a Stop TB Partnership’s digital tool (powered by Dure technologies) that enables people with TB to connect with peers, access TB services and information, and report problems faced while on TB treatment. It also enables national TB programs and other health frameworks to gain access to reliable data that helps them understand the needs and concerns of people affected by TB, which in turn informs service delivery and improves the national TB response.
One Impact is four apps in one, comprising of a digital health platform that supports community-based monitoring of the TB response. It includes an app with all you need to know about TB, an app that helps you access nearby TB health services, an app that connects you with other people with TB and TB support groups and an app that lets you report difficulties in accessing TB services and treatment.
Dr Donald Tobaiwa, the Jointed Hands Welfare Organisation Executive Director said the app has helped address the human rights-related issues affecting the TB community.
“You find that there was no way or systematic mechanism to collect human rights-related data. You are aware that at the facility, all the data that goes into the Ministry’s DHIS tool is purely clinical and we were not recording the social and human rights-related barriers to access the services. The other problem was there was no real-time data on patient care surveillance and monitoring of TB services in the programmatic management of TB,” said Dr Tobaiwa.
He added that the absence of electronic data on human rights-related barriers that can be easily accessed, analysed and used was also slowing down progress in addressing Human rights issues affecting TB patients was a major albatross to improving the quality of care of TB patients.
“Previously, people would share their emotions around what they were facing at facilities but there was no documentation such that we could use that data, analyse the frequency and the number of times it has occurred so that it becomes a policy and an advocacy issue.”
At the moment, only smartphone users can access the One Impact application on Goole Play Store or Apple Store. However, Dr Tobaiwa hinted at plans to roll out the One Impact beyond the smartphone to cater for non-smartphone users.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s national TB strategic plan is guided by the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) End TB strategy where the world is free of TB and there are Zero TB Deaths, Zero TB Doses and Zero Catastrophic Costs due to TB.
Dr Fungai Kavenga, Deputy Director TB and Prevention Control in the Ministry of Health and Child Care said the One Impact application is in line with the End TB strategy where innovation and research are key ingredients to ending TB as a public health problem.
“The strategy has three pillars namely the integrated Patient Centred TB Care and prevention where we are looking at early diagnosis and treatment of all people with TB. The second pillar speaks to bold policies and supportive TB systems. The last pillar speaks to intensified research and innovation where we are looking at prioritising research so that we come up with new innovations and new strategies to end TB,” said Dr Kavhenga.
The OneImpact CLM encourages and facilitates the participation of people affected by TB in all aspects of TB programming to activate a human rights-based, people-centred response. In doing so, OneImpact CLM combats the central TB challenges in the TB response at the individual and community levels while generating essential information and data to better understand and combat them at the programmatic level to end TB
To Download the One Impact Zimbabwe App, Click Here
