Australian Aid Friendship Grant
Tuberculosis is one of the world's deadliest
infectious diseases. The World Health Organisation estimates that there were
1.6 million TB related deaths in 2017. As one of Australia's closest
neighbours, Timor Leste reports over 3,500 confirmed cases of TB infection
annually. Additionally, there is great concern because it is estimated that
almost 50 per cent of cases go undetected. The World Health Organisation
estimates that for every 100,000 people in Timor Leste, 498 have Tuberculosis
and 106 will die as a result of TB (WHO, 2017). Because of delayed diagnosis,
TB is one of the highest causes of hospital death in the country every year
(WHO, 2017).
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| Member of the TB outreach team collects samples in community |
Ryder-Cheshire Australia established a Health
Centre at Klibur Domin in 2000 which now has 80 beds for inpatients. TB and
Multi Drug Resistant TB (MDR-TB) patients occupy 70% of these beds. Case
detection is facilitated by Mobile TB teams collecting sputum samples from
people suspected of having TB in remote villages and analysing them in a
GeneXpert machine located at Klibur Domin. Confirmed cases are then treated
either in their villages or as inpatients at Klibur Domin.With funding from Australian Aid: Friendship
Grants, Ryder-Cheshire Australia is expanding the regional capacity in
Timor-Leste to detect Tuberculosis. By implementing the rapid testing
technology of a GeneXpert machine at the TB laboratory in Viqueque
municipality, in the South-East of Timor-Leste, Australian Aid: Friendship
Grants and Ryder-Cheshire Australia are increasing diagnosis and reducing the
spread of Tuberculosis.
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| Klibur Domin laboratory technician instructing in use of GeneXpert machine |
With training from the Ryder-Cheshire TB
Health Centre Klibur Domin, laboratory technicians at the Viqueque laboratory
now carry out TB tests using GeneXpert technology, while field officers are
undertaking advanced case detection strategies in the surrounding
sub-districts.
This approach has increased the speed and
accuracy of TB diagnosis and dramatically reduced the difficulty of identifying
deadly drug resistant forms of the disease. Furthermore, it has reduced the
cost by almost 90% and the time by over 80% compared to the previous system of
transporting TB samples to the National Laboratory. With funding from
Australian Aid Friendship Grants, Ryder-Cheshire Australia is empowering TB
health workers on the ground in Timor-Leste and raising the profile of the global health priority to eliminate TB.
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| Head of Viqueque CIC and Klibur Domin Director at opening ceremony |
For more information on Ryder-Cheshire
Australia, please visit www.ryder-cheshire.org; and here for more information on other Klibur Domin programs
For more information on the Friendship Grants
program please visit www.dfat.gov.au