In 2020, Viet Nam was one of the 30 highest-burden countries globally with tuberculosis (TB) and multi-drug resistant TB, whereas Cambodia was one of the 30 highest-burden countries with TB. While both nations have made significant progress in reducing TB rates in recent years, they lack the financial resources needed to eliminate TB as a public health problem. Within this context of strained health resources, migrant populations – internal migrants within each of the two countries and cross-border migrants on the Viet Nam–Cambodia border – can easily be missed or overlooked in national efforts to detect TB.
Although cross-border migrants are at high risk of contracting TB, there remains a scarcity of data to support the development of national policy and guidelines for TB control among migrants in Viet Nam and Cambodia. The absence of exploratory studies on barriers faced by cross-border migrant populations along the Viet Nam–Cambodia border to access TB diagnosis and treatment further compounded this knowledge gap.
In response, this landmark study aimed to deliver a better understanding of barriers and enable factors in accessing and utilizing TB diagnostic and treatment services among cross-border migrants. At the same time, it set out to identify challenges in TB control, focusing on areas of interaction and collaboration between governmental and non-governmental agencies along the Viet Nam–Cambodia border.