Impact of incentive health interventions and triple drug administration on treatment coverage
In countries implementing preventive chemotherapy (PC) for the neglected tropical diseases (NTD) there is often a decline in reported treatment coverage following successive rounds of treatment. The control programmes are effectively a victim of their own success as the beneficiaries experience improved health following treatment and are thus less likely to seek treatment.
The incentivisation of beneficiary populations may be key to reverse this trend, yet there is little information on how this is best achieved. This study seeks to measure the impact of applying innovative approaches to increase treatment uptake in beneficiary populations. These incentives are already proven community health interventions that are currently implemented independently of NTD control:
- Distribution of new shoes, partnering with shoe donation organisation
- Provide biscuits to those who come along for treatment
- Health education and distribution of soap for hand and face washing
It is anticipated that one or all of the proposed incentives will have a positive impacts on the uptake of treatment in resource-poor areas and that by co-implementing interventions overall delivery and distribution costs will be reduced. SCI will then assess how these interventions can be rolled out at a larger scale and the generalisability of findings for other countries in sub-Saharan Africa be assessed.