Optimizing Childhood TB Treatment Decision Algorithms in sub-Saharan Africa (OPTIC-TB)

The next Annual Project meeting will be held from 26-27 March 2025 in Kampala, Uganda.

Optic-TB held its Kick Off meeting in Dar es-Salaam in August 2024. 

Coordinator Prof Amani Mori, UiB, welcomed all the participants from DR Congo, Uganda, Tanzania and Norway, and gave a brief introduction of the consortium and their roles.  

With over 50 participants, the two-day kick-off meeting was organised in Tanzania by the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) and Kampala International University in Tanzania (KIUT) to officially launch the project. Here, representatives from all the partner institutions met for the first time together with key stakeholders to discuss the project objective, review work packages, evaluate data collection tools and review prospective PhD-candidate's concept notes. 

In addition to introductory remarks from all the beneficiaries, there was also a presentation by EDCPT representative Dr Erika Gaspari. She gave an overview of the development of the EDCTP programme, and the vision of EDCTP3. She also emphasized the importance of following the reporting requirements and system provided.

The rest of day one included scientific presentations about tuberculosis from different viewpoints, status for all 8 work packages and reporting requirements. 

At the meeting on day two, there was a presentation and thorough discussion of the Data Collection Tools to be used. There were presentations from potential PhD-candidates, followed by discussion of their proposals. There were also time for a presentation about monitoring and evaluations of project activities, milestones and deliverables. 

Project coordinator Amani Mori giving a speech at the meeting

Photo:

Eric Alam

Photo:

G. Koldal

A four-year pragmatic open-label cluster randomized controlled trial will be conducted in 120 primary health facilities in the three countries. About 60,000 children with presumptive TB visiting the health facilities will be screened and those fulfilling the criteria will be enrolled in the study. 

We hypothesize that the WHO-recommended TDA strategy is superior to the standard of care (SOC) in (i) increasing by at least 20%, the proportion of children below 10 years with pulmonary TB detected and initiated on TB treatment and (ii) improve the proportion of children with pulmonary TB with good TB treatment outcome in the intervention facilities compared to the Standard of Care. 

The primary outcomes are (i) the proportion of children detected with TB and (ii) the proportion of children detected with TB and initiated on treatment 

We anticipate that this project will yield results that address the issue of low detection of paediatric TB in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, build research capacity in conducting implementation research in low- and middle-income countries and foster networking and collaboration between the partner institutions. 

WP1 Project Management & Coordination - UiB

WP2 Effectiveness assessment, costing/cost effectiveness and impact evaluation - NIMR

WP3 Performance validation, feasibility and accetability studies - MULI

WP4 Dissemination, Communication and networking - UCB

WP5 Data Management, economic and statistical analysis - NIMR

WP6 Mentorship and Capacity Building - KIUT

WP7 Ethics requirements - UiB

WP8 Scientific project leadership - NIMR

Dr. Amani Thomas Mori (UiB) 

Prof. Sayoki Mfinanga (NIMR) 

Prof. Patrick de marie Katoto (UCB) 

Prof. Bruce Kirenga (MULI) 

Prof. Angwara Kiwara (KIUT) 

Prof. Andrew Kitua (KIU)