Stop TB Partnership

Impact measurement taskforce sees global momentum on surveys, releases new handbook

25 March 2011 - Geneva - The WHO Global Task Force on TB Impact Measurement has reported that significant global momentum is building on prevalence surveys.

Progress in 2010 was impressive, with China and Myanmar completing surveys, Ethiopia starting the first national survey in Africa in around 50 years and Lao PDR starting its first survey. Nigeria implemented a pilot of chest x-ray screening methods, Pakistan conducted a pilot survey and most African countries resolved their financial bottlenecks.

Cambodia started its second national survey at the end of December 2010 and four African countries - Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania - are in a strong position to implement surveys in 2011. Collaboration between Asian and African countries is developing, with survey leaders from Cambodia, China, Myanmar and Viet Nam providing advice and support.

As well as conducting several workshops, seminars and technical assistance missions, the task force released a new edition of Tuberculosis prevalence surveys: a handbook. The second edition will help users to justify, design, fund, implement and analyse a high-quality national TB prevalence survey; to repeat surveys that allow comparisons with earlier surveys; to maximize the value of the data collected during surveys; and to ensure standardization of methods across multiple surveys in more than 20 countries in WHO’s African, Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions

The first edition of this book - Assessing tuberculosis prevalence through population-based surveys - was published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2007. Since then, interest in TB prevalence surveys has increased substantially and there have been several major developments in the field.

Read the handbook