Under the Strategic Initiative, Stop TB’s case detection support to priority countries seeks to:

  • Provide technical assistance and data-informed mentoring to fine-tune, guide and/or modify countries’ TB case detection interventions
  • Enable countries to use their own and local data from routine work to analyze their progress and plan course corrections for different case detection interventions, as approved by the Global Fund.
  • Develop a series of implementation guides and collect best practices on programmatic approaches for improved TB case detection, with subsequent uptake in countries
  • Compile, analyze and refine (sub)-national data (including through MATCH) for developing, fine-tuning or redesigning interventions including through improving relevant programmatic indicators.

Stop TB’s support to the SI priority countries is provided by the Stop TB Secretariat and a consortium of partners, composed of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT)/Netherlands, IRD Global/Singapore as well as experienced international and local TB case detection consultants. Stop TB has assigned a country focal point who is responsible for tracking progress and outcomes of Global Fund supported case detection interventions.

IRD is known for its innovative strategies in delivering patient-centred health care and brings over a decade of experience in active case finding, innovation, capacity building, community engagement, working with vulnerable groups and M&E to ensure optimal TB case finding. Together with Stop TB, Harvard Medical School and Advanced Access and Delivery, IRD is also the founding partner of the “Zero-TB” initiative, which is currently working with 47 cities to promote a comprehensive Search-Treat-Prevent approach. IRD has also been a grantee on each TB REACH funding wave and provided technical support to partners multiple TB REACH grants. Its successful TB REACH project on extensive case-finding for TB in private and linked public sector facilities generated such unprecedented increases in TB case notification, that the Global Fund supported the expansion of this work through a USD 40m (2016/2017) and USD 20m (2018-2020) grant.

KIT has played an instrumental role in the development of the existing TB REACH M&E framework during previous funding cycles. Under the former and current M&E assignments for TB REACH, W1-W5 KIT has gained tremendous expertise in the evaluation of active case finding strategies and its use in finding the people with TB who are missed by health systems. Together with Stop TB and the Global Fund, KIT also recently developed the MATCH approach – a tool, which supports TB control programs find and treat people in some of the most vulnerable and underserved populations. This tool will be helpful for Strategic countries to help analyze their existing but currently underutilized data to understand better where people are missed, who is missed, and why they are missed.