Monitoring anti-tuberculosis activities

graphic charts based on standard deviation units and ranking chart based on summary index

Abstract

Tuberculosis activities monitoring can be a difficult task when dealing with a list of 30 indices to be compared with norms. A new methodology of analysis based on the Evaluation Charts used in Japan, modified and adapted, was experimented in 62 Health Centres of the metropolitan area of São Paulo - Brazil. These Centres have notified 5.622 cases throughout 1993, whose data were monitored for 14 months. The methodology assumes a normal distribution of the indices in original value or some mathematical function on them. For each index the deviation from the mean of the whole was expressed by using the standard deviation as a single scale for all the items of the set used for construction of a Grafic Chart for every Health Centre. Reexpression of data was not necessary in about 65% of the indices. A summary index calculated for each one of the Health Centres was used for ranking them from top to bottom of the group (ranking chart). The group’s perfomance was less than predicted with a negative median value. A detailed analysis of 5 Grafic Charts was done having in mind to demonstrate the interpretation of the results. Conclusions: The experimental methodology is a feasible one; it could be a valuable tool regarding the supervision of Health Institutions engaged in the tuberculosis control programme.