MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention

I-TECH Launches tbpreventiontoolkit.org,
a New Tuberculosis Prevention Website

Step-by-Step Guidance to Help Facilitators Implement the “Three I’s” of TB Prevention

Seattle, 24 March, 2011—On World Tuberculosis Day, 24 March, the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH) is pleased to announce the launch of a new tuberculosis (TB) prevention toolkit, located online at http://www.tbpreventiontoolkit.org.
The toolkit, developed in collaboration with the Curry International Tuberculosis Center at the University of California, San Francisco, is targeted toward facility level administrators and health care workers in communities with a high prevalence of TB and HIV. It is designed to provide clear guidance to help these leaders and clinicians implement, monitor, and continuously improve TB prevention and control measures. It also provides a selected set of accurate, up-to-date guidance documents and resources.

Using the “Three I’s” framework developed by WHO, the toolkit provides guidance on strengthening TB infection control practices, intensifying TB case finding among people living with HIV (PLHIV), and incorporating isoniazid preventive therapy into care and treatment for PLHIV. For each of these “Three I’s,” the toolkit provides detailed implementation activities, action steps, guidance on monitoring and evaluating progress, training tools, and steps ...

I-TECH Launches tbpreventiontoolkit.org,
a New Tuberculosis Prevention Website

Step-by-Step Guidance to Help Facilitators Implement the “Three I’s” of TB Prevention

Seattle, 24 March, 2011—On World Tuberculosis Day, 24 March, the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH) is pleased to announce the launch of a new tuberculosis (TB) prevention toolkit, located online at http://www.tbpreventiontoolkit.org.
The toolkit, developed in collaboration with the Curry International Tuberculosis Center at the University of California, San Francisco, is targeted toward facility level administrators and health care workers in communities with a high prevalence of TB and HIV. It is designed to provide clear guidance to help these leaders and clinicians implement, monitor, and continuously improve TB prevention and control measures. It also provides a selected set of accurate, up-to-date guidance documents and resources.

Using the “Three I’s” framework developed by WHO, the toolkit provides guidance on strengthening TB infection control practices, intensifying TB case finding among people living with HIV (PLHIV), and incorporating isoniazid preventive therapy into care and treatment for PLHIV. For each of these “Three I’s,” the toolkit provides detailed implementation activities, action steps, guidance on monitoring and evaluating progress, training tools, and steps for continuous quality improvement. Together, these resources are intended to help implementers adapt existing national and international guidelines to their local contexts.

The website will be updated periodically to reflect new information and guidelines. To reach a greater number of users, toolkit materials will also soon be available as a free CD-ROM, available from I-TECH on request.
Contact:
Dr. Christopher B. Behrens
Medical Director
International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH)
Email:
Phone: +1-206-221-3790

Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), in collaboration with the City of Cape Town
and the Western cape province have released a report describing the
decentralized model of care for drug resistant TB implemented in
Khayelitsha, Cape Town. The report describes the model of care as
implemented, the principles on which implementation is based and describes
key successes to date. These include: improved case detection with
significantly increased numbers of patients initiating appropriate
second-line therapy, the majority of patients able to receive ambulatory
treatment through their local primary care clinics, improved psychosocial
support for patients and overall improved survival.

The report can be downloaded from the MSF South Africa website:
http://www.msf.org.za/Docs/TB/DR-TB-in-Khayelitsha-Mar2011.pdf

Regards,

Dr Helen Cox
Médecins Sans Frontières
Town One Properties - Site B
Sulani Drive, Khayelitsha
Cape Town, South Africa

Tel +27(0) 21 364 5490
Cell +27 (0)767 169 702
Fax +27 21 361 7051

Greetings from Bangladesh,
The National Tuberculosis Programme and its NGO partners, including BRAC, organized a march in old Dhaka this morning. There are several press conferences scheduled around the country today, with a particular focus on raising awareness around the risks of MDR TB and what Bangladesh is doing to increase its capacity to address the issue domestically.

An article on yesterday's press conference can be found here: http://bdnews24.com/details.php?id=190759&cid=13
And some photos from the march this morning are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/SilverBullet523/WorldTBDay2011Bangladesh?authkey...

Look forward to hearing what others are doing!

Maria

the University Research Corsporation, LLC. (URC) in South Africa through the USAID TB project provides support and technical assitance to the Department of Health at community, facility, district (29), all provinces and national level on a permanent basis; as part of our interventions we provide active support to all the World TB day events in the provinces/ districts as well as the World TB day national event taking place in eThekwini district: trainings on 3Is, collaborative planning and implementation (including GIS mapping of TB index patients' households)towards long lasting ICF and TB patients' household contact tracing.