Similar to HIV, tuberculosis (TB) poses a serious threat to public health in Eswatini. Of the HIV-positive people in Eswatini, 69% also were also diagnosed with TB in 2017. That same year, the estimation was made that the incidence of TB in Eswatini was 308 per 100,000 people. However, the mortality rate for TB was low at only 10 per 100,000 people in 2019.
PAVIA (PhArmaco Vigilance Africa) is an EDCTP-funded project led by Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD) with KNCV being one of the key partners. The primary focus of the project is developing local systems and improving safety of new drugs for treatment of multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB).
KNCV leads the Monitoring and Evaluation component (Work Package 4) of PAVIA. The objectives of Work Package 4 are three- fold:
• Analyze pharmacovigilance (PV) structures and processes at baseline to develop a country-specific roadmap
• Evaluate impact of the project on PV outputs, i.e. adverse event data generated and its impact on policy and practice
• Develop a blueprint to guide scale-up of PV in other African countries