The Union’s MDR-TB activities:
Training for people at every level of the health care system is central to The Union's approach. International and national courses in English, French or Spanish train clinicians to manage MDR-TB cases and cover questions ranging from logistics and procurement to ethics and human rights.
Technical assistance: At the request of an NTP, The Union helps review plans, procedures, policies and systems and makes suggestions for improvement of case detection, diagnosis and patient monitoring. The Union works closely with NTPs to support them in the implementation of best practices for ordering, storing and distributing medicines, as well as to assure the quality of the medicines selected for national procurement and to monitor their quality. Moreover, The Union gives in situ an online technical assistance in the clinical management of complicated TB cases, included patients with MDR-TB and XDR-TB. In recognition of the pivotal role of laboratories in diagnosing and monitoring drug-resistant strains of the disease, The Union has also helped develop an international network of TB reference laboratories.
Operation research and clinical trials: The Union is currently running a clinical trial to assess a nine-month standardized treatment regimen for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in South Africa, Ethiopia and Vietnam. It is also coordinating an operational research study on a 9-month regimen for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in 9 francophone African countries.
Guides/publications: In 2013, The Union published a new guide entitled ‘Guidelines for the Clinical and Operational Management of Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis’. Together with MSF, The Union has released a publication entitled ‘DR-TB drugs under the microscope: the sources and prices of medicines’.
For more information and resources from The Union, please visit: http://www.theunion.org/.