TB programme outcomes in South Fly District, Papua New Guinea, were maintained through COVID-19

Abstract

SETTING: An established response to an outbreak of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) on Daru Island, South Fly District (SFD), Western Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). OBJECTIVE: To describe and evaluate the trends in TB case notification disaggregated by demographic and clinical characteristics, programmatic interventions for TB and COVID-19 and treatment outcomes in 2017–2022. DESIGN: A cohort study of routinely collected programmatic data of all patients registered for TB treatment in SFD comparing pre-COVID (2017–2019) to COVID (2020–2022) periods. RESULTS: Of the 3,751 TB cases registered, 19.6% had DR-TB, and the case notification rate was 1,792/100,000 for Daru and 623/100,000 for SFD. There was a 29.2% reduction in case notifications from 2019 to 2021, with recovery in 2022. During COVID, the healthcare workforce was adversely impacted, and active TB case-finding was stopped. During COVID, compared to pre-COVID, bacteriological confirmation increased (62.3% to 71.9%), whereas rates of child TB notifications (11.6% to 9.1%), pulmonary TB (60.8% to 57.4%) and DR-TB (20.7% to 18.6%) decreased. High rates of treatment success were maintained for both drug-susceptible (86.5%) and DR-TB (83.6%). CONCLUSION: Health systems strengthening and community engagement before COVID likely contributed to resilience and mitigated potential impacts on TB in this remote and resource-limited setting. Case notifications remain very high, and additional interventions are needed to interrupt transmission.

Keywords

• covid-19
• tuberculosis
• papua new guinea