The
WHO Regional Office for the Eastern
Mediterranean announces the 18th
call for application of the EMRO/TDR
Small Grants Scheme for operational
research in tropical and other
communicable diseases.
The deadline is 31 March 2010
Download the call and proposal form
(pdf, 344 kb )
Sudan National Partnership Council
for Tuberculosis Control in 2010
Sudan’s
National Partnership Council for TB
control organized its first meeting
in Khartoum on 4 January 2010 to
discuss the current situation of TB
in the country and the activities of
the Council.
The
meeting agenda covered many items,
including the planned activities of
World TB Day and endorsement in 2010
for the Partnership and official
registration of the National
Partnership Council in the Human Aid
Commission of the Government of
Sudan.
The
Council asked the TB Ambassador
(Professor Awad I Awad) to brief
Sudan’s First Lady, Mrs Fatima
Khalid, about the current situation
of TB in the country, to seek her
approval on the plan for 2010 and on
the preparation of activities for
World TB Day. The Partnership
operates under the auspices of the
First Lady.
All
participants showed their
willingness to support the national
TB programme and TB patients in
order to achieve their goals.
Anti TB
medicine donation from the Patient
Helping Fund in
Kuwait
The
Patient Helping Fund in Kuwait is
kindly helping patients with
tuberculosis in Somalia by
purchasing anti-TB medicines. The
medicines arrived in Nairobi in the
middle of 2009 and have secured
treatment for tuberculosis patients
in Somalia until the end of the
year. The Patient Helping Fund has
signed an agreement with the Global
Drug Facility of WHO headquarters to
purchase first-line anti-TB
medicines for Djibouti and Yemen at
a cost of US$ 160 000.
This is the second round of
collaboration between Kuwait and WHO
to take place within a few months.
Through this agreement, the Fund has
allocated US$ 380 000, broken down
as follows:
-
US$ 70 000 for Afghanistan from
2008 to 2009
-
US$ 150 000 for Somalia for
anti-TB medicines
-
US$ 160 000 for Yemen and
Djibouti to cover the cost of
first-line anti-TB medicines for
2010
The Patient Helping Fund is
continuing its support for the
control of multidrug-resistant
tuberculosis by collecting money for
the regional multidrug resistance
centre and is also conducting
collaboration in this regard with
humanitarian societies in member
countries of the Gulf Cooperation
Council, namely the Al Shareqa
Society and the Mebrah El Saier
Society. This collaboration will
build capacity in these countries,
provide momentum to implement the
stop TB strategy and will assist in
reaching the global targets for case
detection and treatment success
rates.
Letter from Dr Hussein
A. Gezairy, WHO Regional Director
for the Eastern Mediterranean
(Arabic)
The Fourth International
Congress of Pulmonary Disease, Intensive
Care and Tuberculosis, Tehran, Islamic
Republic of Iran, 13 to 16 October
On
National Tuberculosis Day in the Islamic
Republic of Iran, the Fourth
International Congress of Pulmonary
Disease, Intensive Care and Tuberculosis
was held simultaneously with the
Twentieth National Congress of
Tuberculosis from 13 to 16 October. The
event was hosted by the National
Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung
Disease, in collaboration with the
European Respiratory Society. The
congress was presided over by Professor
Ali-Akbar Velayati with Professor
Mohammad-Reza Masjedi as the Scientific
Director of the Congress. More than 60
guests from other countries and many
doctors, laboratory specialists and
nurses from different regions of the
country attended the Congress.
More
National
Partnership to Stop TB launched in
Morocco
Rabat (24 October 2009). H.E.
Yasmina Badou, the Minister of Health of
Morocco, and Ms Anna Cataldi, the global
Stop TB Ambassador and former UN
Messenger of Peace, jointly announced
the launch of the National Partnership
to Stop TB in Rabat at the end of a
two-day national conference on
tuberculosis care.
The
conference held from 23 to 24 October
was attended by over 300 delegates from
across the country affirming their
support to stop tuberculosis in one of
the high-burden countries of the WHO
Eastern Mediterranean Region. On the
occasion, a national charter on
tuberculosis was read and endorsed by
the delegates. The charter was later
released for a broader call for adoption
by national public sector institutions,
civil society, professional unions and
the media. The Partnership will be run
by a secretariat comprising a forum
representing all stakeholders and a
consultative forum of key stakeholders
will serve as the governing board.
More
Workshop on TB medicine
management in Tunis, Tunisia, 28
September–2 October 2009
The Global Drug Facility of the Stop
TB Partnership, in collaboration
with the WHO Regional Office for the
Eastern Mediterranean, and
Management Sciences for Health (MSH)
organized a 5-day workshop on the
management of TB medicines in Tunis,
Tunisia. The workshop was attended
by representatives of national TB
control programmes and ministries of
health from countries of the Region.
The Global Drug Facility, the Stop
TB programme of headquarters and the
Regional Office and MSH facilitated
the sessions on standards, medicine
management cycle, selection,
procurement, distribution and
inventory and rational use of first-
and second-line medicines.
The
objectives of the workshop were to:
-
explain how monitoring is an
essential part of improving TB
medicine management performance;
-
explain the performance
improvement process;
-
provide information on
methods to monitor performance and
evaluate the impact of medicine
management interventions;
-
identify key performance
indicators for monitoring
tuberculosis medicine management;
-
demonstrate how good data may
be obtained and used for
decision-making;
-
provide participants with an
opportunity to become familiar with
the concepts of performance
monitoring and evaluation through
group exercises and fieldwork.
In
addition to the above objectives,
extensive sessions were held on TB
TEAM technical assistance and TB MDR
drug management and the rational use
of anti-TB
medicines.