• News from the Stop TB Partnership Secretariat
  - Special Announcements
  - Global Alliance for TB Drug Development
  - Stop TB Advocacy and Communications Task Force
  - Tuberculosis Monitoring and Evaluation
  - WHO StopTB Vacancy
  - TB-Related News and Journal Items Weekly Update
• New Partners
• News from the Stop TB Working Groups
  - New Drugs Working Group 
  - DOTS Expansion Working Group
  - TB/HIV 
• News from the Global Drug Facility (GDF)
  - GDF Applications/Review Update
  - GDF Procurement/Supply Update
  - GDF Direct Procurement
  - GDF Donor Advocacy
• Calendar of  Events
• In Print

   Website access to information:

• Stop TB Secretariat (WHO, Geneva): http://www.stoptb.org
• Global Drug Facility for TB: /GDF/default.asp
• Strategy & Operations, Monitoring & Evaluation: http://www.who.int/gtb

News from the Stop TB Partnership Secretariat (web site)

Special Announcements

Our Stakeholders representatives and guests (per invitation only) are invited to join the Annual Stakeholders Meeting of the TB Alliance, to be held during the lunch and afternoon of 30 October 2003, in Paris.

Through presentations and panel discussions, we will review the progress of the TB Alliance and present the expanded portfolio and investments in platforms to support drug development.   We will also strategize on joint advocacy initiatives for new TB drug development. We will end with a formal business session restricted to voting representatives of official member organizations of the Stakeholders Association.

We anticipate starting over lunch at 12.30 pm with a keynote address, and ending by late afternoon in time for the official opening of the IUATLD Conference.

As we approach the date, a formal invitation including agenda and meeting location will be mailed to attendees.  In the meantime, please address any questions to: joelle.tanguy@tballiance.org

Over the past several years there has been steady progress towards the development of new drugs for TB, with the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development playing a leading role in this field.  In this session, the current status of work in this area, from drug discovery to clinical trials, will be reviewed and progress in several specific programmes highlighted.

Objectives:

• To describe recent progress in identifying drug targets against latent TB bacilli
• To review work on new lead compounds with promising activity against novel targets
• To present information on experimental (mouse) studies of new drugs in early clinical development
• To summarise the results of recent studies from clinical trials groups that impact TB treatment

This Symposium is an integral part of the IUATLD World Conference on Lung Health and participation requires registration to the Conference.  Updated information on all aspects of the Conference is available at the IUATLD Web site: http://www.iuatld.org.

Stop TB Advocacy and Communications Task Force 

The third annual meeting of the Stop TB Advocacy and Communications Task Force will be held from 7-9 September in Johannesburg and hosted by the National TB Control Program of South Africa.

We are very pleased that a number of newly active Task Force members and collaborators will participate in the meeting for the first time, including senior officials from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programmes, the Communication for Social Change Consortium, Soul City, UNAIDS and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Representatives from seven national TB programmes in sub-Saharan Africa will also participate.

The meeting will have three main sections structured into distinct working groups:

1. Global advocacy

The agenda includes the Stop TB advocacy and communications workplan for 2004-2005, the upcoming Partners' Forum in New Delhi and special projects, with a composite budget for all activities delineating the roles of the Partnership Secretariat and implementing partners.

2. National and sub-national capacity building

The agenda will build on the outcomes of an Experts’ Consultation on Communications and Social Mobilisation organized by the Stop TB Partnership in Cancun in late June, which focused on three main questions:

• Advocacy, communication and empowerment, which must be 'embedded' as an integral part of DOTS expansion to accelerate case detection;
• Capacity-building through provision of tools, indicators, technical advisers, information exchange, and regular assessments to facilitate effective country-level programming;
• Indicators for measuring social behavioural change, which should be integrated into data-gathering mechanisms of NTPs and reported by countries along with epidemiological data.

3. TB/HIV advocacy

The agenda will cross-cut the other two sections and focus on the specific characteristics and complexities of TB/HIV advocacy at global and national levels. The discussion will be joined by colleagues from GFATM and UNAIDS, representatives of HIV/AIDS advocacy groups, and NTP officials from countries where the duel epidemic is highest.

Tuberculosis Monitoring and Evaluation

The second regional workshop on TB epidemiology and surveillance on 6-9 August 2003 in Harare, Zimbabwe.

The goals of the workshop were:

(1) To review TB survey and surveillance methods, especially those relevant to AFR
(2) To make a fuller compilation of data on TB epidemiology and NTP performance from AFR countries
(3) To examine ways in which these data can be more systematically collected and analysed in future.

Attendees (41+ WHO staff) included NTP programme managers, epidemiologists and statisticians from 29 countries in AFR. Formal teaching and exercises took three days (6-8 August); WHO staff met on 9 August to discuss ways to maintain and increase momentum on the analysis of surveillance and survey data.

The main outcomes were:

(1) A Compact Disc containing the workshop aims, programme, participants, presentations, exercises and data sheets; distributed to all participants, and available from CD or BW.
(2) A fuller compilation of data and analyses by participants from 29 countries, and their deeper understanding of analytical methods to support programme performance.
(3) Completed annual surveillance forms for 8 (additional) African countries.

WHO StopTB vacancy

Partnership Resource Administrator - Geneva, Switzerland
WHO - HQ/03/TBP/TA140
Deadline for applications : 5 September 2003
Please apply online through the WHO e-recruit system

TB-Related News and Journal Items Weekly Update

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides the TB-Related News and Journal Items Weekly Update as a public service only. (Providing synopses of key scientific articles and lay media reports on TB does not constitute CDC endorsement.) The Update may also include information from CDC and other government agencies, such as background on articles in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), fact sheets, and press releases.

Those interested may subscribe, or change their subscriptions, by visiting the web site http://lists.asciences.com/mailman/listinfo/tb-update.

New Partners
We are pleased to announce the acceptance of the following organizations into the Global Partnership to Stop TB in the months of July-August 2003.

Association Burkinabe Pour la Survie de L`'Enfance
Mr François Zongo
Director
02 BP 5262 Ouagadougou 02
Ouagadougou
Burkina Faso
Email: francois.zongo@zcp.bf
http://www.abse.bf

DAN TB
Dr Chitra Sundaram
Health Systems Research Adviser
A 1/148 Safdarjung Enclave
110 029,New Delhi
India
Email: danlep@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in
http://www.dantb.org

International Tuberculosis Foundation, Inc
Mr Jerry Woolley
Executive Director
1440 W. Washington Blvd.
60607-1878,Chicago
Illinois
USA
Email: ITF@ALAMC.ORG
http://www.itfweb.org

Rapid Biosensor Systems Ltd
Dr Elaine McCash
Technical Director
Babraham Hall Babraham
CB2 4AT,Cambridge
Cambs
United Kingdom
Email: elaine.mccash@rapidbiosensor.com
http://www.rapidbiosensor.com

The new partners have been accepted after due consideration and having completed all the required steps for joining the partnership.

We at the Secretariat, and on behalf of all the partners in the Stop TB Partnership, extend our congratulations to you and welcome you to the fight to stop TB.

News from the Stop TB Working Groups (web site)

Stop TB Working Group on New Drugs - Annual Meeting
October 30, 2003. Paris, FRANCE
[To be held in conjunction with the IUATLD World Conference on Lung Health in Paris, France]

This is an all-morning series of consultations and presentations. We will review the progress in the field of TB drug development, map activities of the Working Group members, and chart the course for the coming months.  We anticipate starting at 8:30 am (CET).  As we approach the date, further information including the day’s agenda and meeting location, will be posted here. In the meantime, please address any questions to info@tballiance.org.

For information on the IUATLD 34th Annual World Conference on Lung Health, please visit the IUALTD website at http://www.iuatld.org

To go to the TB Alliance home page, click here

DOTS Expansion Working Group (DEWG)

Meeting of the 2nd ad hoc Committee on the TB epidemic, 18-19 September, 2003, Montreux, Switzerland

The 2nd ad hoc Committee on the TB epidemic will meet in Montreux, Switzerland, on 18-19 August 2003. The 1st ad hoc Committee on the TB epidemic met in London in 1998 and made several far-reaching recommendations, including the establishment of the Global Partnership to Stop TB and of the Global TB Drug Facility. The DOTS Expansion Working Group has convened this 2nd ad hoc Committee to make recommendations for the mid-term (5 years) strategic direction for global TB control. The Committee's report will complement the Global Plan to Stop TB (GPSTB), which describes the two sets of essential measures to control TB, i.e. in implementation (DOTS expansion) and research. The main focus of the Committee's report will be on implementation of TB control (DOTS expansion) and on research relevant to TB control implementation over a five-year fime frame. In developing the report, the committee will analyse the constraints to DOTS expansion, identify challenges to overcome them, and propose solutions. The Committee will define a strategic direction for the DOTS expansion movement to implement fully the Global DOTS Expansion Plan and achieve the WHA 2005 targets.

A series of five consultations on TB and key health system themes will inform the deliberations of the Committee. In collaboration with key partners, the DEWG secretariat is convening this series of consultations involving selected groups of public health experts for input in areas beyond the current more specific TB scope of the Stop TB Partnership. These areas include primary health care, human resources, social mobilisation, expanding the Partnership, and health system reform. The final consultation (on TB and human resources) took place in Geneva on 27-28 August.

Satellite symposium: 13^th International Conference on AIDS and STIs (ICASA) in Africa.
21 September 2003, Conference Room 7, Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi, Kenya

The Stop TB Department of WHO in close collaboration with the HIV Department has organized a satellite symposium entitled " TB/HIV epidemic: How should TB and HIV/AIDS programmes respond?" in conjunction with the 13^th International Conference on AIDS and STIs (ICASA) in Africa in Nairobi, Kenya on Sunday 21 September 2003 from 8:00 AM - 12:00 AM.

The objective of the satellite symposium is to present the need for collaborative TB/HIV activities and illustrate the activities required to strengthen the collaboration between the TB and HIV/AIDS programmes. Experiences and results of past and ongoing collaborative TB/HIV activities in Africa and the Global Interim Policy on collaborative TB/HIV activities will be shared. The role of collaborative TB/HIV activities in the realm of the "3 by 5" plan- 3 million people on Antiretroviral drugs by 2005 will be discussed.

GDF Applications/Review Update:
The GDF has, to date, received applications for grants of TB drugs from 65 countries, two NGO’s, one federal state, and one public-private partnership initiative. Of these, 46 applications have been approved for support and two are still under consideration. For the complete list, please visit the homepage of the GDF website: www.stoptb.org/GDF/

The GDF is still accepting applications for the seventh TRC (Technical Review Committee) which will take place at WHO headquarters, Geneva, on 16–18 September 2003. The closing date for receipt of applications is 31 August 2003. So far we have received applications from Angola, Niger, Turkmenistan, Burkina Faso and Equatorial Guinea. Sudan which was placed under consideration during the previous TRC meeting will be reconsidered. Applications from monitoring countries, Nigeria and Togo, will also be considered and we are expecting two more from Syria and Albania. Two further monitoring countries are under consideration: TFYR Macedonia and Madagascar.

Country visits for Egypt and TFYR Macedonia took place in July and the country visit for Madagascar is underway at the moment.

Consultants Database: The secretariat is currently creating a database of consultants to take part in GDF country and monitoring missions.

GDF Procurement/Supply Update:

To date, 34 countries have received deliveries of TB drugs from the GDF. Drugs for an additional 7 countries have been ordered and should be received in 2003.

IAPSO, the original GDF procurement agent, has won the tender for a second term thus renewing their contract for a further two years.

The process for the production of a pre-qualified list of TB drug and product manufacturers meeting WHO/international standards is still ongoing. Completion of the first list is expected end of August, with publication of a list in the public domain expected in the final quarter of 2003, once the list is comprehensive enough to add value as a public good to TB programmes and Stop TB partners. A new Memorandum of Understanding between GDF, Green Light Committee (GLC) and the WHO department for Essential Drugs and Medicines (EDM) was signed for 2003 and 2004.

GDF Product Development

GDF has made rapid progress in the development of two patient kits – one for Categories I and III, another for Category II – each containing enough drugs for one full course of treatment for one patient. The Category II patient kit will also contain syringes complying with Safe Injection Technology. Prototypes of both patient kits together with an illustrated instructions booklet have already been field tested in Cambodia and are currently being field tested in Kenya. It is hoped that the final patient kits will be ready in the last quarter of 2003.

GDF Direct Procurement:

The GDF’s Direct Procurement Service enables eligible governments and their partner organizations to purchase high-quality, low-cost drugs directly through the GDF. The aim of the direct procurement mechanism is to promote DOTS expansion.

The GDF has completed a revised information pack to promote the Direct Procurement Service. The one page Direct Procurement information sheet is now available on the GDF website in English, French and Russian. See /GDF/drugsupply/Direct_procurement_process.html

Through the GDF partnership programme, we are working with volunteer marketing experts from Proctor and Gamble on how best to market and promote the Direct Procurement Mechanism. The P&G team working on Direct Procurement are currently negotiating with an advertising agency on behalf of the GDF to produce a formal campaign promoting Direct Procurement. Proctor and Gamble volunteers are also working with members of the GDF team on the branding of the GDF. A draft proposal is expected in early September.

GDF Donor Advocacy

The final report of the external evaluation of the GDF was circulated together with a one page advocacy document to potential donors. It is hoped that this will produces pledges to overcome the shortfalls currently faced by the GDF for 2004 and 2005.

A greatly expanded CIDA report (six monthly report on the activities and achievements of the GDF) was also completed and distributed. It has already met with very positive feedback.

The Green Light Committee (GLC) converged with the Global Drug Facility

To increase access to and rational use of anti-TB drugs, two initiatives were launched in 2000 and 2001, respectively: the GLC for second-line drugs and the GDF for first-line drugs. Both initiatives are complimentary and the Stop TB Coordinating Board, the Working Group on DOTS-Plus for MDR-TB, and the Stop TB Department of WHO have recommended to converge them. Convergence of the two operations can lead to greater efficiency, better advocacy, increased financing, increased technical knowledge for the GLC and GDF and better TB control. Informal steps toward convergence were initiated via joint GDF/GLC activities in December 2002, and the two bodies formally converged in July 2003 with the secretariat of the GLC now being housed in the GDF. While complete convergence will be an ongoing process, these initial steps will serve to take advantage of the expertise of both initiatives while maintaining the visibility of each.

New Staff

Two new staff are joining the applications and review and monitoring areas of the GDF. This reflects the rapidly increasing workload (represented by the huge increase in country applications) experienced by the GDF since its foundation.

Calendar

Seventh Technical Review Committee, WHO, Geneva, 16-18 September 2003

Calendar of Events (web site)

For more information on upcoming events, please click on the above link:

August/October 2003

• Gordon Research Conference on Tuberculosis Drug Discovery
  Oxford, UK, August 31-September 5
• 1st International Conference on TB Vaccines for the World: TBV 2003
  17-19 September, Montreal, Canada
• 2nd ad hoc Committee on the TB epidemic
  Montreux, Switzerland, 18-19 September, 2003
• Satellite symposium: 13th International Conference on AIDS and STIs (ICASA) in Africa
  Nairobi, Kenya, 21 September 2003
• European Respiratory Society Annual Congress,
  Austria, Vienna, 27 September - 1 October 2003
• 4th DOTS Expansion Working Group Meeting
  Netherlands, The Hague, 7-8 October 2003
• 100 Year Celebrations of the Royal Netherlands Tuberculosis Association (KNCV),
  The Hague, Netherlands, 9 October 2003
  (A symposium focussing on "NGO's on the front lines of tuberculosis control" will take place at the Royal Theatre in The Hague)
• 41st Annual Meeting of IDSA
  9-12 October, 2003, San Diego, California, USA
• Stop TB Coordinating Board Meeting
  Netherlands, The Hague, 10-11 October 2003
• International Day for the Eradication of Poverty
  Switzerland, Geneva, 17 October 2003
• 9th European Conference on Clinical Aspects and Treatment of HIV Infection (EACS)
  Poland, Warsaw, 26-29 October 2003
• International Conference for People Living with HIV/AIDS
  Uganda, Kampala, 26-31 October 2003 
• The 4th Meeting of the Working Group on DOTS-Plus for MDR-TB 
  will be held back-to-back with the 34th IUATLD World Conference on Lung Health,
  (this meeting was postponed due to SARS)
  Palais des Congrès in Paris, 27-28 October 2003
• 34th IUATLD World Conference on Lung Health
  - The Late Breaker Session related to Tuberculosis
  Palais des Congrès in Paris, France,  27-28 October 2003
• Stop TB Working Group on New Drugs - Annual Meeting
  Paris, France, 30 October 2003. 
• IUATLD Symposium: Advances in the Treatment of TB
  Sponsored by the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development
  Paris, France, 31 October 2003. 

 

In Print

• Communicable diseases information resources No. 8, January-June 2003
  WHO/CDS/IRC/2003.1
  
• Public-Private Mix for DOTS, practical tools to help implementation
  WHO/CDS/TB/2003.325
  
• The Final Push Strategy to Eliminate Leprosy as a Public Health Problem:  Questions and Answers, Second Edition 2003
  WHO/CDS/CPE/CEE/2003.37
  
• The Global Plan to STOP Tuberculosis - Imagine a TB-free world!
  WHO/CDS/STB/2003.23 (also available in French and Spanish)
  
• Améliorer la formation pour la lutte contre la tuberculose - Développement des ressources humaines. pour la lutte contre la tuberculose - Approche stratégique dans le cadre de l'appui aux pays.
  WHO/CDS/TB/2002.301 
  
• PAL - Practical Approach to Lung Health - What is PAL?
  

All documents are available from the CDS Information Resource Centre; fax: +41 22 791 4285; e-mail: cdsdoc@who.int.

- A list of selected recent articles from refereed journals, book chapters, and other publications on the subject of TB control is available at http://www.who.int/gtb/publications/

 

'Stop TB' - a global movement to accelerate social and political action to stop the spread of tuberculosis around the world. For further information please contact the Stop TB Secretariat at: stoptbinfo@who.int