- Title Empowering informal healthcare providers to detect tuberculosis using tongue swabs: a field-based, open-label, cluster randomized trial in India
- Granting Agency CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Sciences)
- Period 1 April 2024 – 31 March 2028
- Amount $569,926
In this project, informal providers (IPs) in urban and rural Patna (India) will be recruited and randomly assigned to two groups: the control group or the intervention group. The control group will receive comprehensive training on how to identify patients with symptoms suggestive of TB and how to make appropriate referrals for further evaluation. The intervention group will undergo the same training as the control group but will also receive a specialized training on the collection, handling and storage of tongue swab samples for TB testing. We will measure the impact of the intervention comparing key outcomes between two groups, such as the difference in count of TB cases diagnosed in intervention and control arms, number of presumptive TB cases identified, number of tongue swabs collected, and proportion of successful referrals made by IPs in both arms. Our findings will provide evidence on whether training IPs will improve TB case diagnosis, and whether enabling them to collect tongue swabs for TB testing can amplify this impact.