16 June 2010 - Geneva - The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership's project in China, which has received an award for excellence in business action from the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, deserves high praise, says Dr Marcos Espinal, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership. "We are so very pleased that they have received due recognition for their efforts to raised awareness about TB in Qinghai province - a poor and remote region where people are at high risk of TB," he said.
The Lilly Partnership chose a three-pronged approach for its initiative in Qinghai, targeting school children, healthcare professionals and the community as a whole. To reach primary and middle school students, Lilly worked with the Qinghai Center for Disease Control to train 9,000 teachers on TB prevention and treatment. The teachers integrated that training into their lesson plans, ultimately reaching more than 100,000 students. The second component provided a similar training to 500 health workers, using the proven training of trainers’ model.
The initiative also trained 60 community leaders from minority groups in the area - including the Tibetan, Buddhist and Muslim communities. This helped address a major gap in current public health efforts in the province - that certain minority groups prefer to receive health information from their own leaders, as opposed to doctors of another background.
The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership is a public-private initiative that encompasses global health and relief organizations, academic institutions and private companies, and is led by Eli Lilly and Company. Its mission is to address the expanding crisis of MDR-TB. Created in 2003, the Partnership mobilizes more than 20 global healthcare partners on five continents. The Partnership has implemented community-level programmes to raise awareness about MDR-TB, increase access to treatment, ensure correct completion of treatment and empower patients by eliminating the stigma of the disease. The Partnership also trains healthcare workers to recognize, treat, monitor and prevent the spread of MDR-TB.