Development of an interventional strategy for the management of epilepsy in South-East Asia

Background The prevalence of epilepsy is 7.7‰ in Laos and 5.8‰ in Cambodia, and the treatment gap exceeds 90% in both countries. Objective Our research program aims to measure the effectiveness of two community-based health care approaches using two different types of Domestic Health Visitors (DHV) trained to screen and follow patients with epilepsy (PWE): (1) in Laos, DHV were chosen from health center staff (2) in Cambodia, DHV were health volunteers residing in the villages. Patients and Methods / Material and Methods Between 2015 and 2017, these two quasi-experimental studies were conducted in rural districts over a 12- months period comparing an intervention area and a control area. Our intervention included an Information, Education and Communication campaign, specific training of the DHV staff, and regular monitoring. In Laos, the treatment gap was reduced by 5.5% (20 to 43 cases under treatment of the 418 expected) in the intervention area versus 0.5% (21 to 25 cases under treatment of the 788 expected) in the control area (p