145 6 Tuberculosis services during the Covid-19 pandemic 3.3 Some practices ensured healthcare services delivery 3.3.1 Home-based care An adaptation to ensure continuity of services for patients was community and homebased care. Patients received essential medical care and medication refill for chronic conditions within their community, at home, or at a pre-arranged service delivery point. “We usually do community and home visits wherein we do TB contact tracing and TB history; this helps us to uncover TB presumptive cases” R6 “…we are doing home visits to deliver their medication to relieve them with the transport fare…” R21 3.3.2 Patient support The respondents also provided different types of support for patients during the pandemic to encourage them and to ensure they continue with their treatment (Table 3). Some of these include providing counselling, transport reimbursement to the clinic, follow-up calls, drug refills near their homes and food supplies. 3.3.3 Patient Education The respondents felt health education was important to empower their patients to become responsible for their health and minimize TB infections within the community. “We have dedicated our Wednesdays… for teaching and review of the patients. TB treatment also involves teaching the patient about health education and how to prevent the spread of TB even at home” R10 3.3.4 Integrated services Offering services at different sections of a health facility can prolong the time a patient spends at a health facility and requires more personnel. This may discourage some patients from accessing care. To avoid this, the respondents indicated they introduced a system where possible services a TB patient will require during a visit are provided at one service point. This will reduce waiting time, encourage patients to keep their appointments and minimize required staff. “We have introduced the one-stop-shop, wherein we have integrated all the services at one point” R15
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw