Symposium, Committee Room 1, 11.07.2017, 16:15 - 17:45
"Innovative approaches for improved TB case detection in children and vulnerable groups" - A TB REACH symposium
With the SDGs setting out to end TB by 2030, and guided by WHO’s END TB Strategy and Stop TB Partnership’s Global Plan to End TB, increased commitment and action from governments and partner is gaining track. One of the key challenges is yet to find the estimated missing 4.3 million people with TB worldwide – often due to lack or insufficient access to health services for diagnosis, treatment and care. While high-quality diagnosis and rapid diagnosis has improved in recent times, it is becoming apparent that such advances are insufficient to curb the epidemic. National responses continue to be dominated by too passive and mostly facility-based approaches. Innovative, locally-sensitive interventions are clearly needed to find the missing cases of TB, especially when focusing on children and vulnerable groups. This symposium showcases selected TB REACH projects, their experiences and lessons learned. Four past and current TB REACH grantees from African countries will present their projects to inform a more general discussion on how TB REACH-funded approaches can help improve TB case detection in children and vulnerable groups in low-resource and high-TB burden settings. Panel speakers will include TB REACH grantees from different African settings sharing their experiences and best TB case finding practices. With the new Global Fund funding cycle (2017-2019), catalytic investments for selected TB high-burden priority countries and new ambitious targets set for finding and treating people with TB, countries and implementers are keen to implement more cutting-edge approaches for strengthened TB health service delivery and that are inclusive of TB high-risk groups and vulnerable populations. Moreover, with a new call for applications for TB REACH’s funding Wave 6 to be launched in Q4 2017, the symposium provides a unique opportunity for future interested applicants to learn more about the initiative and its available grants.
Symposium:
Moderator: Miriam Faid; Switzerland
Organizer: TB REACH/Stop TB Partnership
Presentations -
REACH (Ethiopia) - Using health extension workers to improve access to TB diagnosis and treatment for women and children in Southern Ethiopia
The Medical Research Council (The Gambia) - Improving diagnosis and management of childhood TB in The Gambia: The ‘TB REACH 4 Kids' experience
Community Health Solutions (Kenya) - Finding the Children: Pediatric TB in Kenya
Aurum Institute (South Africa) - Innovative algorithms for TB active case finding in inmates in South Africa