Improving TB Surveillance and Patients' Quality of Care Through Improved Data Collection in Angola: Development of an Electronic Medical Record System in Two Health Facilities of Luanda.

TB Programs should promote the use of digital health platforms, like Electronic Medical Records (EMR) to collect patients' information, thus reducing data incompleteness and low accuracy and eventually improving patients' care. Nevertheless, the potential of digital health systems remains largely unexploited in low-resource settings. Angola is one of the 14 countries with a triple burden of TB, TB/HIV and MDR-TB (multidrug-resistant TB) and it is among the three countries, together with Congo and Liberia that have never completed a drug-resistance survey so far.

Integrating TB and non-communicable diseases services: Pilot experience of screening for diabetes and hypertension in patients with Tuberculosis in Luanda, Angola.

Background: In the face of the rising burden of non-communicable diseases like diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypertension in sub-Saharan Africa, where infectious diseases like Tuberculosis (TB) are still endemic, the double burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases appears to be increasing rapidly. However, the size of the problem and what is the proper health system approach to deal with the double burden is still unclear. The aim of this project was to estimate the double burden of DM hypertension and TB and to pilot the integration of the screening for DM and hypertension in the TB national programs in six TB centers in Luanda, Angola.

Factors associated with patient and health care system delay in diagnosis for tuberculosis in the province of Luanda, Angola.

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is still a great challenge to public health in sub-Saharan Africa. Most transmissions occur between the onset of coughing and initiation of treatment. Delay in diagnosis is significant to disease prognosis, thus early diagnosis and prompt effective therapy represent the key elements in controlling the disease.