Global Plan to Stop TB 2016-2020: First regional consultation in Addis Ababa shows great consensus and endorsement of the current draft

07 May 2015 - Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - The first of four regional consultations on the Global Plan to Stop TB 2016-2020 ended with great enthusiasm and consensus on the directions, objectives, targets as well as structure.

The regional consultations are built on the back of the Global Fund Partnership Forum, which ensures building synergies and enabling cross-fertilization between the Global Fund Strategy 2017-2021 and the Global Plan to Stop TB 2016-2020. It also ensures a wider and diversified participation in order to reach a wide range of stakeholders for input.

The rich discussion had the privilege of having eight parliamentarians from three different countries, bringing with them different perspectives on how to approach and address TB packages of interventions at country level and decision making implications.

During the forum, the participants expressed full support for the set of 90-90-90 targets, emphasized the need for a greater link with the HIV response in the African region, and highlighted the importance of the inclusion of key populations and ideas on engaging community and civil society.

The discussion also drew attention to highlighting drug-resistant TB as a link to antimicrobial resistance, articulated the need to engage better with politicians and parliamentarians, and made a strong case for putting communities in the forefront -- to own and lead the fight against the disease.

The new Global Plan represents the investment case and the advocacy tool of the first five years of the End TB Strategy that goes up to 2035. It is our strongest case for how the world can change its approach to fighting TB in order to break out of the current stagnation and to "bend the curves" of incidences and mortality in line with the End TB Strategy.

It calls for a paradigm shift from simply controlling TB to designing campaigns over the next five years that will eventually put an end to the epidemic, as the World Health Assembly committed the world to do in 2014. The regional consultation in Addis Ababa demonstrated the enthusiasm from partners for this much needed "paradigm shift" and for campaigns to End TB - similar to the success that polio has seen.

The next regional consultation will be in Bangkok, Thailand on 23 June, followed by Istanbul, Turkey on 23 July and ending with a regional consultation in Latin America in September. An online public consultation of the next Global Plan will be made available in June.

The new Global Plan will launch at the end of the year in Cape Town, South Africa on the back of the 46th Union World Conference on Lung Health.

List of participants