Rewards for TB Contact Screening (RECON)

Because of the high risk of both TB and HIV among the household contacts of TB patients and the importance of early case detection for both diseases and especially for DR-TB, improving TB case finding is a high priority. Recent studies have shown that having healthcare workers make multiple visits to the homes of TB patients in order to screen household contacts is a logistically challenging and resource- intensive strategy, and it is not routinely undertaken in most public sector settings in South Africa. One alternative to home visits that could prove effective and affordable is to offer small economic rewards to the household contacts of TB patients who voluntarily present at a healthcare facility for TB symptom screening and optional HIV testing.

RECON is an evaluation of the feasibility, acceptability, and cost of offering an economic reward, in the form of a R50 or R100 shopping voucher, to the household contacts of index patients (outpatient drug- susceptible and drug-resistant TB patients) who present at the study clinic for TB screening and optional HIV testing, providing a reward to the index patients for participating, and entering index patients
whose contacts do present into a lottery to win a prize. The effectiveness of the intervention in screening a high proportion of contacts and its cost per contact screen and TB case diagnosed will be compared to existing published and unpublished data from studies of active case-finding through home visits and of the status quo passive case finding. If successful, this pilot project will create a demand for screening among high risk patients, who will be rewarded for identifying themselves to the healthcare system, and could prove to be an affordable alternative to resource-intensive home visits. It will also shift responsibility for contact tracing from overburdened clinic staff to those who have the most to gain
from early case detection—the patients and their families.