Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E)

While many interventions have been implemented to tackle communicable diseases, there is huge diversity in the groups targeted, the scale of implementation, and the design of evaluation methods assessing their effectiveness. The TARGETS Consortium brings together a broad range of expertise to measure the process and impact of disease control.

Research under this theme aims to develop appropriate indicators for the progress of global initiatives towards the MDGs and evaluate the conditions for integrating local communicable disease research into the policy cycle. Members of the TARGETS Consortium also research the technical and political conditions required to randomise the roll-out of interventions, assisting national disease control programmes to measure their effectiveness objectively.

In Tanzania, results of a major TB drug resistance survey by KNCV in collaboration with the Ministry of Health are being used for planning policy on second line treatment, and will also inform future surveillance strategies. A modelling study on a much-neglected tropical disease, sleeping sickness, has recommended that active case detection will be necessary if the disease is to be eliminated.