USAID Eliminate TB Project

Overview

The five-year USAID Eliminate TB Project (2020–2025) builds on MSH’s 15-year legacy in Ethiopia’s TB control efforts. In collaboration with KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation and local partners—Amhara Development Association (ADA), Oromia Development Association (ODA), and REACH Ethiopia—the project aims to reduce TB incidence and mortality by enhancing the quality, accessibility, and sustainability of TB services across five regions. 

To achieve this, the project focuses on the following strategies: 

  • Strengthening service delivery across sectors: Improve early TB diagnosis and treatment in both public and private health facilities while reducing unnecessary costs for patients. 
  • Enhancing targeted case detection: Support the government to align TB case detection efforts with disease prevalence data and introduce highly sensitive diagnostic and screening tools. 
  • Expanding latent TB interventions: Boost prevention and treatment of latent TB infection as part of a comprehensive disease control approach. 
  • Promoting sustainability and country ownership: Help mobilize and optimize domestic resources while building national capacity to manage, implement, and report on TB programs. 
  • Engaging communities and local partners: Collaborate with civil society, community organizations, and private-sector actors to raise awareness, support prevention, and ensure local-level access to care. 

Highlights

Strengthening Lab Capacity to Save Lives: How MSH is Helping Ethiopia Eliminate TB

A key component of the USAID Eliminate TB Project’s approach is working to increase access to early TB diagnosis and treatment for patients. To do so, the project focuses on expanding and improving laboratory services by providing state-of-the-art GeneXpert machines to health facilities throughout the country and training laboratory technicians on their use. 

Harnessing Innovative and Feasible Strategies to Optimize TB Case Finding: High-Load Health Facilities Initiative in Ethiopia

The “High-Load Health Facilities Initiative” in Ethiopia focuses on optimizing tuberculosis (TB) case finding in response to the decline in TB incidence and the challenge of undetected cases. The initiative employs innovative screening tools, such as chest X-ray (CXR), to enhance clinician awareness and training, thereby improving TB detection and treatment coverage.

Join MSH at the 54th Union World Conference on Lung Health

Centered on the theme, “Transforming Evidence into Practice,” and focused on our approaches in Ethiopia and Afghanistan, MSH colleagues will discuss tuberculosis prevention and treatment in post-conflict environments, engagement of local organizations to ensure the sustainability of TB programs, and development of public-private partnerships to elevate TB care delivery. Join us as we focus on converting research into tangible practice and champion evidence-based TB health policies and decision making. 

Children under the age of 15 are especially vulnerable to contracting TB due to their underdeveloped immune systems and how contagious the disease is. In Ethiopia, the USAID Eliminate TB Project partnered with the Ministry of Health and created TV and radio ads to educate the community on TB preventive treatment offered at local health facilities. These ads encourage families who are in close contact with TB-positive patients on how to protect themselves and their community.
There are many reasons—length of the treatment time, fear of side effects, distance from a health facility—why TB patients stop their treatments. Betiglu Legesse, of the Keta Health Center near Addis Abba, Ethiopia, created a new way to encourage patients to return to his facility for their daily TB medicine. On a patient’s first day of treatment, they receive a pot, some soil, and a plant seedling. Every day the patient comes to the facility to care for their plant, they also receive their TB drug regimen. And Legesse is seeing results to his thoughtful plan: an increase in treatment adherence by the health center’s patients.
Daniel Gemechu
Dr. Daniel Gemechu

Chief of Party

Project Contact

Dr. Daniel Gemechu Datiko has more than 15 years of experience designing, implementing, and managing public health programs and community-based health interventions related to blindness prevention, leprosy, HIV, maternal health, digital health, and tuberculosis. Dr. Datiko previously served as the project director for Challenge TB Ethiopia within MSH-supported regions. He has served as a consultant for the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine UK on designing and implementing community-based TB interventions; for the Stop TB Department in Cambodia where he designed private-sector engagement in TB; and for the World Health Organization in Zimbabwe where he designed and wrote guidelines for targeted mass screening for TB in Zimbabwe. Dr. Datiko has served as leadership at regional and national levels, received and managed grants from international donors, contributed to capacity building by supervising postgraduate students, and published more than 40 articles in peer reviewed journals. Dr. Datiko began his career as a general medical practitioner and has worked closely with the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia throughout his career, including coordination the TB, Leprosy and Blindness Prevention and Control Program for the Southern region of Ethiopia. He holds a PhD in epidemiology and international health from the University of Bergen, Norway.

Donors & Partners

Donors

The United States Agency for International Development

Partners

KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation

Amhara Development Association (ADA)

Oromia Development Association (ODA)

REACH Ethiopia