ArticleHuman resources for health2022
Effectiveness of community health workers on identification and mobilization of persons living with epilepsy in rural Rwanda using a validated screening tool.
Article in Human resources for health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Association of depression and epilepsy in rural northern Rwanda: a prospective longitudinal study with a patient-centered approach.Epilepsy & behavior reports · 2026Article
- Lived experiences of parents of children with genetic and neurodevelopmental disorders accessing genetic services in Rwanda: barriers and enablers.Journal of community genetics · 2026Article
- Article
- Social and occupational functioning scale for epilepsy: performance in Brazilian adult patients with epilepsy.Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria · 2025Article
- Utilizing an mHealth Platform and Community Health Workers to Enhance Epilepsy Screening and Treatment in a Rural Setting in Mali: A Closed Cohort Study.Journal of epidemiology and global health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionEngagement and training of community health workers (CHWs) have demonstrated their value in different conditions. Despite repeat epilepsy trainings of CHWs in Northern Rwanda, the treatment gap remained high. We hypothesized that effectiveness of CHWs on mobilization of patients living with epilepsy (PwE) could be improved using a validated tool for epilepsy screening.
methodsCHWs associated with health centers (HCs) of Gataraga, Kimonyi and Karwasa attended a 1-day training on epilepsy and Limoges epilepsy screening questionnaire (Kinyarwanda version). Thereafter, CHWs screened households in their villages for persons with one or more positive answer. CHWs then accompanied positively screened persons to a consultation for clinical evaluation and diagnosis by neurologists, and demographic data were collected. CHW variables were collected retrospectively.
resultsA total of 1308 persons were screened positive by 281 CHWs. Clinical diagnosis of epilepsy was confirmed in 589 and in 93 additional unscreened PwE, presenting voluntarily at the consultation. Pre-intervention number of 48 PwE increased to 682 after, a 14.2-fold increase. The overall treatment gap amounted to 93.0%. The age distribution of male PwE preponderance at younger age inverted to females at older age. CHW characteristics showed non-significant differences within and across HCs. Logistic regression did not relate CHW age, gender, and experience to screening results. DISCUSSION: Equipping CHWs with a validated screening tool was effective in identifying and mobilizing PwE in a short time frame and offers opportunity for future scaling. Nonetheless, barriers to sustainability of care will need to be addressed before.
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