NEWS FROM THE STOP TB PARTNERSHIP SECRETARIAT
For a
selection of weekly TB news articles, visit our news
page
STOP TB PARTNERSHIP
- WHO DECLARES TB AN EMERGENCY IN AFRICA
On 25 August
in Maputo, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Committee
for Africa comprising 46 ministers of health declared tuberculosis
an emergency in the African region, a response to an epidemic that
has more than quadrupled the annual number of new TB cases in most
African countries since 1990 and is continuing to rise across the
continent, killing more than half a million people every
year.
The address to the Committee by the Stop TB
Delegation was presented by Dr Luis Gomes Sambo, WHO Regional
Director for Africa. The Stop TB delegation included Dr Jaap
Broekmans, Director, KNCV; Ms Lucy Chesire, Kenyan TB/HIV
activist; Dr Marcos Espinal, Executive Secretary, Stop TB
Partnership; Dr Irene Koek, Chief, Infectious Diseases Division,
USAID; Dr Mario Raviglione, WHO Director, Stop TB; and Ms Fernanda
Teixeira, Secretary General of the Red Cross Society of
Mozambique, IFRC.
Looking forward, the African Union may
officially endorse and support the TB emergency declaration during
its upcoming meeting 10-14 October in Gaborone, Botswana. For more information click here.
- 2005 UN World Summit report calls for strengthened
commitments for TB control
World Health Organization -- The
2005 World Summit in New York, marking the 60th anniversary of the
United Nations, was the largest gatherings of Heads of State and
Government in history. Including substantial emphasis on health
and development, the World Summit Outcome document
emphasizes:
"Stressing the need to urgently address
malaria and tuberculosis, in particular in the most affected
countries, and welcoming the scaling up of all efforts in this
regard of bilateral and multilateral initiatives."
The
document additionally includes several commitments to promote
sustainable long-term funding for TB, strengthen public-private
partnerships, develop new TB drugs, diagnostics and vaccines, and
strengthen health systems in Africa.
Read more ...
- Upcoming meeting: 36th Union World Conference on Lung
Health of the International Union against TB and Lung Disease (the
Union) 18-22 October 2005 in Paris, France.
The focus will
be "Scaling up and sustaining effective tuberculosis, HIV and
asthma prevention and control". The Stop TB Partnership and WHO
have a number of activities and meetings planned. For more
information on Partnership meetings, see relevant sections below.
For more about the conference click here.
ADVOCACY, COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIAL MOBILIZATION
(ACS)
- WHO and the Stop TB Partnership worked effectively together to
generate enormous global and regional media coverage of the Africa
TB emergency declaration in Maputo, including major news stories
on BBC World Service Radio and TV, BBC domestic service, CNN
International, more than 100 newspapers across Asia, Europe and
North America, and intensive coverage in South Africa and other
sub-Saharan African countries.
- In a press event in Kiev the Ukrainian Minister of
Health announced a new 3-year, $2.5 million grant of TB drugs to
Ukraine by the Global Drug Facility (see below). The event
generated broad coverage in the Ukrainian television, press and
on-line media, and was a key opportunity to applaud and reinforce
Ukraine's recent commitment to scale up DOTS services.
GLOBAL DRUG FACILITY
- Results of the 12th Round of Applications to the
GDF
The 12th meeting of the GDF Technical Review Committee
(TRC) was held on 15-18 August 2005 at WHO Headquarters in Geneva.
The TRC is an independent body of international TB and drug
management experts responsible for evaluating country applications
to the GDF. The TRC considered applications from 10 different
countries of which 6 were approved for new or continued support:
Cameroon, Haiti, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Togo and Ukraine. To date, the
TRC has approved more than 80 applications to the GDF.
- 36th IUATLD World Conference on Lung Health,
18-22 October
Together with the NGO Management Sciences
for Health (MSH), GDF is organizing a 1-day workshop during the
IUATLD conference on "Strengthening Medicine Supply in National TB
Programmes: Practical Guidelines and Tools", to be held on 19
October.
- GDF drug management workshops
In November 2005, GDF
is hosting two drug management workshops for consultants. The
first is for the South East Asia and Western Pacific regions to be
held 7-11 November in Hanoi, Viet Nam, and the second is for
Central Asian Republics to be held 14-18 November in Almaty,
Kazakhstan.
- GDF issues Expression of Interest
The GDF is
searching for qualified procurement agents to undertake the
purchase of second-line anti-TB drugs from a selection of
suppliers for delivery to a number of Green Light Committee (GLC)
approved projects. The second-line anti-TB drugs will have a value
of around US$ 5 million per annum. Click here for the official
announcement.
- Tender for new GDF Quality Control Agent
The GDF
will be conducting a tender opening session at the current
procurement agent's (IAPSO) headquarters in Copenhagen for the
selection and award of the new Quality Control Agent. More news on
the outcome of this exercise will follow shortly.
- GDF initiates process for ISO 9001: 2000
certification
Currently, all
internal quality maintenance procedures already in place within
the GDF are laid down in the form of Standardized Operating
Procedures (SOPs) and the relevant forms and documentation are
developed. By the end of October the official ISO inspection will
take place, and if all goes well the GDF will be ISO Certified by
10 November.
TB AND POVERTY
SECOND GLOBAL PLAN TO STOP TB
(2006-2015)
- Draft of the Global Plan to Stop TB (2006-2015) is now
available for comments
The Stop TB Partnership is
developing the second Global Plan to Stop TB (2006-2015) as a
successor to the first Global Plan (2000-2005). The Plan is still
a working draft and your comments on it are welcome. Please send
your comments to globalplantostoptb@who.int
by 18 October. The Plan will then be finalized by end-October and
launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on 29
January 2006.
To view the draft plan, click here.
NEWS FROM PATIENTS AND THE AFFECTED
COMMUNITY
- LHL and Stop TB Partnership appoint focal point for
patients and affected communities
Patient-centered
approaches and the involvement of patients and affected
communities are increasingly referenced in the professional TB
community, but there are few initiatives that have explored or
documented these resources comprehensively. The Norwegian
Association of Heart and Lung Patients (LHL) has seconded Ted
Torfoss to the Stop TB Partnership Secretariat as a focal point on
this issue for an 11-month period. His role will be to coordinate
activities with national and global networks of the affected
community to empower, involve and mobilize patients and the
affected community at different levels.
- Participation in the 1st meeting of the Sub Group on
Advocacy, Communications, and Social Mobilization at Country
Level
The TB-affected community has taken some important
steps forward with the appointment of representatives to the Stop
TB Coordinating Board and several of the Stop TB Working Groups.
The latest development was participation in the first meeting of
the Subgroup on Advocacy, Communications, and Social Mobilization
at Country Level, held in Mexico City from 13-16 September, where
patient and affected community involvement was made an important
part of the new 10-year plan for ACSM at country level.
WORKING GROUPS
Joint meeting
- Joint meeting of the DOTS expansion, TB/HIV and DOTS-PLUS for MDR-TB working groups :
15-17 October, Palais des Congrès, Versailles, France
18 October, Palais des Congrès, Paris, France
- Meeting of the subgroup on childhood TB: Monday afternoon, 17 October 2005, Palais des Congrès, Versailles, France.
For more information, contact the chair of the subgroup, Professor Robert Gie at rpg1@sun.ac.za
Working Group on New TB Drugs
- Upcoming events
Annual Meeting of the Stop TB Partnership Working Group on
New TB Drugs
19 October 2005, 8:30 am - 12:30 pm
Hotel
Royal Monceau, Paris, France
For more information email: stoptbdrugwg@tballiance.org
Symposium on Recent Advances in TB Drug
Development
20 October 2005, 8:00 am - 10:15 am
Palais
des Congres, Paris, France
Symposium on TB-HIV Co-treatment Issues
21 October
2005, 14:00 pm - 16:15 pm
Palais des Congrès, Paris, France
View PDF flyer for the above events.
Issues in TB Drug Development: Open Forum
December
6-7, 2005, Washington, D.C.
For more information email:
TBDrugForum@courtesyassoc.com
- European Parliament Adopts Resolution Supporting R&D
for New TB Drugs
On September 8, 2005 the European
Parliament passed a resolution calling for commitment and funding
for innovation to fight TB and other neglected diseases. The
resolution identifies public-private partnerships such as the TB Alliance as
"key to innovation and capacity building." For the full text of
this resolution, please click here.
Working Group on Advocacy, Communications, and Social
Mobilization
- Past workshop: Introduction to Advocacy, Communication
and Social Mobilization Workshop - International Training in
Tuberculosis Control.
Held at the Research Institute of
Tuberculosis (RIT), Tokyo, Japan
September 2005.
- Meeting of the Sub Group on Advocacy, Communication and
Social Mobilization at Country Level: 13-16 September 2005.
Sponsored by the Mexican Ministry of Health, Mexico City,
Mexico.
For more information click here.
Working Group on New TB Diagnostics
- Annual Meeting of the Stop TB Working Group on New
Diagnostics: Thursday, 19 October, 12:30-16:30, Havane
Amphitheatre, Palais de Congres, Paris.
To view the agenda
click here.
For
more information, contact Laurence Perret, Foundation for
Innovative New Diagnostics at: laurence.perret@finddiagnostics.org.
Development of new TB tools
"Grand Challenges in
Global Health", a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
initiative, has awarded $45 million to support three major new
projects on TB:
- Biomarkers of Protective Immunity Against TB in the Context
of HIV/AIDS in Africa, $13.1 million
Stefan H.E.
Kaufmann of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in
Germany will lead an international consortium in an attempt to
identify immune system differences between people who are exposed
to TB and never become sick, and those who develop serious
disease. The researchers will focus particular attention on people
infected with both TB and HIV.
- Drugs for Treatment of Latent Tuberculosis Infection, $20
million
Douglas Young of Imperial College in London
will lead an international collaboration to fill a critical gap in
currently available TB treatments: curing latent TB infection. Dr.
Young's team will attempt to understand the fundamental biology of
latency and use this to develop drugs that are effective against
latent TB. Their work could also lead to improved treatments for
active TB disease.
- Preclinical and Clinical Evaluation of a Post-Exposure TB
Vaccine, $11.3 million
A team led by Peter Andersen of
the Statens Serum Institute in Denmark will try to identify the
mechanisms that allow TB bacteria to escape the natural immune
responses that help some people keep the disease under control
while others succumb to serious illness, particularly people with
HIV. With this information the project hopes to design and test a
therapeutic vaccine that can stimulate the immune systems of
people with latent TB to eliminate the infection.
RECENT MEETINGS
- VI National TB Programme Manager's meeting of the
Americas Region took place in Quito, Ecuador, 23-25 August
2005.
- Following this meeting was the first meeting with
the Regional Stop TB Partners took place on Friday 26 August 2005
to discuss the preparation of a future Stop TB Regional
Partnership for the Americas.
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Hot Topics
36th Union World Conference on Lung Health
http://www.worldlunghealth.org
Stop TB Partnership Secretariat new staff
Rachel Bauquerez, Technical Officer, will work on developing an
action plan by each of the three R&D Working Groups for drugs,
diagnostics and vaccines.
Homero Hernandez, Technical Officer, is responsible for
coordinating GDF application and review activities.
Luis Lourenco will be an intern with GDF for 3 months to work on
expanding the current GDF catalogue to include paediatric anti-TB
drug formulations.
Vacancies
TBP is looking for a Procurement Officer in charge of
coordinating GDF activities in the Procurement and Supply Management
(PSM) sub team. Vacancy now open (STB/05/TA336), if interested
please apply at: The
WHO vacancies page.
Upcoming Events
Meeting with G8 technical counterparts, 14 October,
Versailles, France.
Organized by WHO and the Stop TB
Partnership to discuss follow-up to the G8 Gleneagles declaration
and implementation plans for G8 recommendations.
The 9th Stop TB Coordinating Board Meeting is to take place in
Assisi, Italy, 10-11 November 2005.
For more information
click here
New Partners
The following is a list of new Partners who have joined the Stop
TB Partnership since the last Communiqué. To view the list click here.
To apply to become a partner visit: click here
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