Evaluation of tuberculosis surveillance system in a municipality in Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study

Introduction: public health surveillance is the ongoing systematic identification, collection, collation, analysis, and interpretation of disease occurrence and public health event data, to take timely and robust action, such as disseminating the resulting information to the relevant people, for effective and appropriate action. Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by the micro-organism Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The main objective of this study was to describe the operation and performance of the TB surveillance system in a municipality in Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: this was a cross-sectional study, which employed qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. The process was guided by the Updated Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Surveillance System Evaluation Guidelines. The study was conducted in the La Nkwantanang Madina Municipality (LaNMMA).

Results: the system was found to be useful for planning, monitoring, and evaluation of TB control activities as well as the development of priorities for TB control programmes. The system was found to be simple and flexible with good data quality. However, stability, sensitivity (44.2%), predictive value positive (8.7%) and acceptability were all found to be poor. Even though the downstream flow of information was found to be excellent, the upstream flow of information was found to be poor.

Conclusion: it was concluded that the system was performing poorly. The system was not achieving most of the objectives for which it was set up. The Ghana Health Service should take measures to strengthen and improve the LaNMMA TB surveillance system in the post-pandemic era.