28 July 2014 - "The Union is a pathfinder. What’s important about our projects is not their size, but how they show the way forward," says Dr Chen-Yuan Chiang, a tuberculosis expert and Director of the Department of Lung Health and Non-Communicable Diseases.
Over the past decade, he has played a central role in several such path-finding initiatives -- from the groundbreaking FIDELIS project, to the World Bank-funded Comprehensive Approach to Lung Health, ADF asthma pilot projects, Global Asthma Network, and the current campaign to improve the treatment for multidrug-resistant TB.
A chest physician from Taiwan with a master’s in public health and a Dr Philos, Chiang joined The Union in 2003 as a technical monitor for FIDELIS -- the Fund for Innovative DOTS Expansion through Local Initiatives to Stop TB. At that time - as it is now -- TB case-finding was a major challenge, especially among those with limited access to health care and in remote and under-served areas. FIDELIS tackled this problem by funding 54 locally designed and focused case-finding projects in 18 countries - a successful approach that served as a model for the Stop TB Partnership’s subsequent TB REACH project.