Clinical Management, Community Responsibility, Information and Guidance to Health Services in the Fight against Tuberculosis (GRIOT)

April 2024

ONGOING PROJECT

Clinical Management, Community Accountability, Information and Guidance to Health Services in the fight against Tuberculosis (GRIOT)

In line with Strategic Objective 1 'Maximise impact against HIV, TB and malaria' promoted by the Global Fund actions, the project, financed by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation and led by the Università Cattolica in collaboration with the Thouret Onlus Foundation and the Sainte Jeanne-Antide Thouret Hospital, aims to fight tuberculosis (TB) in the health district of Ngaoundal, in the Adamaoua region of Cameroon, where the incidence of TB cases is particularly high.

The Università Cattolica, through the Faculty of Medicine and the Policlinico Gemelli, provides expertise in infectious diseases, epidemiology and public health. The Thouret Foundation, present in Ngaoundal since 1987, has in-depth knowledge of the local context, while the hospital offers a direct service to the district population.

The main objective is to strengthen prevention campaigns, encourage screening and improve the clinical management of TB by promoting a 'community-based' intervention model that addresses all aspects of the fight against tuberculosis: prevention, early diagnosis, care and treatment, and sustainability of interventions.

The partnership will work jointly to train local staff and empower the community, involving community leaders with peer-education strategies and implementing health education and screening interventions, with a focus on women and children, ideal actors to promote a virtuous mechanism within the community.

To implement this strategy, TB prevention and control days, called 'TB-days', will be organised. During these events, a mobile team will directly visit villages and schools to conduct training sessions and screening activities aimed at the population and students, which will make it possible to identify suspected or high-risk cases, which will be rapidly directed to hospital facilities to start a therapeutic treatment pathway, and to check the vaccination status of the child population. Furthermore, at the beginning and at the end of the TB-Days, some questionnaires will be administered to assess the evolution of the participants' knowledge and awareness regarding tuberculosis.

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Professor Patrizia Laurenti's first mission to the Sainte Jeanne Antide Thouret Hospital in Ngaoundal, Cameroon, has come to an end. 

On 24 October, the campaign to combat tuberculosis within the GRIOT project was launched with the first TB Day, the first in a series of days dedicated to tuberculosis awareness and screening activities, attended by representatives of the region's institutions and 146 inhabitants of the district. 

The GRIOT project - Clinical Management, Community Responsibility, Information and Orientation to Health Services in the Fight against Tuberculosis, promoted by the Catholic University through CeSI and implemented in collaboration with the Ngaoundal Hospital and the Thouret Onlus Foundation, is financed by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation. 

The project activities are carried out under the scientific guidance of Prof. Patrizia Laurenti, Professor of General and Applied Hygiene, and Prof. Massimo Antonelli, Professor of Anaesthesiology and Director of the University Centre for Bioethics and Life Sciences.