INTE-AFRICA

Duration

01/01/2019 - 31/12/2022

Coordinator

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Funded by

EU Horizon 2020

Website

http://inteafrica.org/

The diseases affecting the African population have drastically changed in the last decades. Although acute infections continue to constitute a high burden, chronic diseases, which require regular lifelong care, now have an equal or higher burden.

Two of the chronic conditions of major concern are hypertension (the single largest risk factor for death, it has reached a prevalence of 20% in Africa), and diabetes (its prevalence in Africa is increasing rapidly and currently exceeds 5%).

This represents a huge challenge for Africa, where coverage of health services remains low. Less than 5% of people with diabetes or hypertension are thought to receive regular care. 

INTE-Africa proposes to scale up provision for diabetes and hypertension in two countries in Africa (Uganda and Tanzania).

Objectives

The main objective of this implementation research project is to assess the effectiveness and feasibility of two approaches: scale up hypertension and diabetes integrated services alone, or in combination with HIV infection services.

The specific objectives are:

• Reorganise primary health care services so that diabetes and hypertension can be diagnosed and treated in dedicated chronic care clinics in two large regions (one in Tanzania and one in Uganda).
• Reorganise HIV clinics into chronic care clinics in 2 large regions (different from the above) so that they can diagnose and treat all three conditions: HIV, diabetes and hypertension.
• Decentralise care from health facilities to community posts for patients stable on treatment.
• Evaluate these approaches in terms of acceptability (by patients and community), number of patients treated and retained, clinical outcomes, costs of integrated care delivery, and cost-effectiveness (compared to current standard care).
• Use the data generated to develop national and global clinical guidelines for the provision of diabetes and hypertension care in low-resource settings.
• Describe the challenges faced by health services in delivering the integration models and disseminate this knowledge to improve practices and facilitate further scale up.
• Develop sustainable partnerships between researchers, government policy makers, public-private partnerships to facilitate the scale-up nationally.
• Disseminate the knowledge generated to facilitate effective control of diabetes and hypertension in low-resource settings.

Impact

This project is expected to catalyse the scale up of diabetes and hypertension services in the two countries and beyond. The model could also be replicated for other disease conditions, facilitating universal access to care and health coverage and optimizing the use of resources.

Total funding

€ 4.2 million