South Africa: Western Cape launches publicly available TB dashboard to help monitor TB responses

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Western Cape government launches first public-facing TB dashboard to help monitor province’s TB response

I am pleased to announce today that the Government of the Western Cape has launched the first public tuberculosis (TB) dashboard. The TB dashboard will help monitor the implementation of the province’s multisectoral TB response plan.

This follows my commitment in my State of the Province address that we must treat the TB epidemic with the same seriousness we take in the fight against COVID-19. I am also committed to using the lessons learned from our COVID-19 agile response in the fight against TB. Providing up-to-date public data that enables behavior change and monitors the success of government interventions is a key component.

The Tuberculosis Response Plan was developed and approved by the Provincial Council on AIDS and Tuberculosis (PCAT), which I chair, to address the severe impact COVID-19 has had on testing, diagnosis and tuberculosis-related treatment in the province.

The TB response plan, through the use of this interactive TB dashboard, aims to get our TB response back on track, promote transparency and digitize our response. Tuberculosis has long been an epidemic in the Western Cape and the dashboard will help us gather real-time data to respond effectively.

The TB dashboard is modeled on the COVID-19 dashboard and includes data on TB cases, deaths, tests, test positivity and drug resistance, as of 2015. These are aggregated and updated monthly to ensure that clinical and laboratory data are representative of the period included.

A number of title data items (top center) are reported for a selected date range (automatically set to the previous year). These include:

TB Tests (GXP): The total number of first-line GeneXpert (GXP) tests performed in the provincial public sector to screen for TB or confirm a diagnosis of TB.

Percent Positivity: This is the proportion of all GeneXpert tests for the given selected time period that were positive, reflected as a percentage.

Number of TB cases in Western Cape: The total number of TB cases diagnosed in the province, whether by laboratory tests, x-rays and / or clinically by a healthcare professional.

Tuberculosis cases in the previous month: This is the total number of tuberculosis cases diagnosed, by any means, during the last calendar month of the given period.

Number of TB deaths: This is the total number of deaths that have been associated with TB in the Western Cape for the given date range (date of death within date range).

Additional dashboard components include:

Geographic distribution of cases or positivity: Depending on the location of the diagnosis, the number of cases or the proportion of positivity among GXP tests is reflected for the date range selected by sub-district. These can be quickly filtered into rural or metropolitan sub-districts and reflected as horizontal bar graphs (left) and a shaded map (center).

Temporal trends in cases, deaths, GXP tests and test positivity. The charts on the right show the changes over time in these basic metrics. Deaths are reflected on the same graph as cases to allow comparison of the ratio of new diagnosed cases to deaths during the same time period. The positivity of the tests is reflected on the same graph as the total number of GXP tests performed.

A separate set of graphics details drug resistant TB (R-TB), a subset of the total TB burden. These graphs are the same as for all tuberculosis, except that the test is reflected as the proportion of all positive GeneXpert tests that identified drug resistance (to rifampicin, a key anti-tuberculosis antibiotic in the line. frits).

Finally, users have the option of conducting a tuberculosis screening questionnaire via a link to a WhatsApp service.

According to the dashboard, the state of the tuberculosis epidemic in the Western Cape is as follows:

The total number of tuberculosis cases diagnosed between September 1, 2020 and August 31, 2021 was 38,846, of which 1,578 (4.1%) were drug resistant;

3,041 cases were diagnosed in the last calendar month of the period, August 2021;

The total number of confirmed deaths associated with tuberculosis in the previous year was 4078; and

A total of 186,097 GXP tests were performed in the previous year, with 17% being positive and 4.2% of them showing drug resistance.

I encourage residents to familiarize themselves with the symptoms of TB to play their part in stopping the spread and getting help from our health department as soon as possible.

The most common symptoms of tuberculosis include:

A persistent or unexplained cough.

Bloody sputum or phlegm.

Pain in the chest when coughing or breathing.

Loss of weight and / or loss of appetite. Or poor growth in children (not gaining weight as expected).

Malaise or fever.

Profuse sweating at night.

Tuberculosis can affect any part of the body, so ask your healthcare professional to take this into account if you have any unexplained symptoms or health problems.

People who have been in close contact, perhaps at home, at work or at school, with someone diagnosed with TB are at increased risk of becoming infected and sick themselves. Tuberculosis spreads through the air like COVID-19. Tuberculosis is unfortunately a source of unjust stigma and discrimination. Anyone can get sick with TB, it’s not their fault.