A detailed Evaluation Report on eCompliance and eDetection was submitted by a High Level Committee appointed by the Government of India. The Committee was headed by none other than the Director, National TB Institute of India. It consisted of a Senior Epidemiologist, State TB Officers from four different states in which Operation ASHA works, and many WHO TB Consultants. This team evaluated Operation ASHA’s program in four states. The Full Report can be read here .
Important recommendations and comments from this report are briefly given below
- ‘eCompliance should be expanded to slums across the country for both the public and private sector. It should be linked electronically with labs and other health facilities (which is provided by other applications utilized by Operation ASHA like eAlert and EMR).
- ‘Detection rate of Operation ASHA is 240 patients/ year/ 100,000 population. ‘This is 2.4 times higher than average detection in the country and 1.6 times higher than the WHO benchmark. Key reason for better achievement by Operation ASHA is Active Case Finding, which is done with the support of eDetection software.
- All patients who were detected by Operation ASHA were enrolled in the treatment with ZERO initial default. This means, all patients were put on treatment quickly. In contrast, initial default across India is 18%. So many patients are not put in treatment by the other implementers, even after detection. They go on suffering, dying and infecting others.
- Treatment Success Rate (TSR) of patients treated by Operation ASHA is 88%. In contrast, TSR across India is 74%. Based on third party validations, no other organization has ever achieved even 80% TSR.
- Government TB staff and physicians are very happy with the results and the technology.
- eCompliance promotes “digital health for the end TB strategy – an agenda for action” notified by the WHO.
