Remote evaluation of STH program coverage: Experiences from the DeWorm3 study, India

by Kumudha Aruldas, Rohan Michael Ramesh, William E. Oswald, Venkateshprabhu Janagaraj, Angelin Titus, Jabaselvi Johnson, Malvika Saxena, Gideon John Israel, Katherine Halliday, Judd L. Walson, Arianna Rubin Means, Sitara Swarna Rao Ajjampur BackgroundThe DeWorm3 trial is a multi-country study testing the feasibility of interrupting transmission of soil-transmitted helminths by community-wide mass drug administration (cMDA). Treatment coverage during cMDA delivery was validated by in-person coverage evaluation surveys (CES) after each round of treatment. A mobile phone-based CES was carried out in India when access to households was restricted during the COVID-19 lockdown. MethodsTwo focus group discussions were conducted with the survey implementers to document their experiences of conducting phone-based CES via mobile-phone voice calls. Principal findingsIn the phone-based CES, only 56% of sampled households were reached compared to 89% during the in-person CES (89%). This was due to phone numbers being wrongly recorded, or calls being unanswered leading to a higher number of households that had to be sampled in order to achieve the sample size of 2,000 households in phone-based CES compared in-person CES (3,600 and 2,352 respectively). Although the phone-based CES took less time to complete than in person coverage evaluations, the surveyors highlighted the lack of gender representation among phone survey participants as it was mostly men who answered calls and were then in...
Source: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases - Category: Tropical Medicine Authors: Source Type: research