Date:
Location:
The Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery–Dubai, in collaboration with the Stop TB Partnership, hosted a technical meeting in Dubai bringing together leaders in TB care and prevention from across Pakistan. Eighty participants—including practitioners, program leaders, and policy makers—represented sixty different organizations from across Pakistan.
TB represents a major public health concern in Pakistan. Currently, Pakistan is ranked the fifth highest TB-burdened country and the fourth highest MDR-TB-burdened country globally (1). To date Karachi is the only city in Pakistan to be formally participating in the Zero TB Initiative, which was co-founded by the Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery-Dubai. This Initiative aims to build partnerships among local coalitions of TB organizations that can together implement a comprehensive approach to eliminate TB, namely the “Search, Treat, Prevent” model advanced by the Zero TB Initiative.
The February technical meeting in Dubai was convened to share experiences and expertise from teams working in multiple regions of Pakistan, in order to promote a shared understanding of how to embark on and deploy this comprehensive approach in their respective locales. Among the topics discussed during the meeting were the use of proven, comprehensive, and community based care platforms and approaches to optimize TB care delivery. The goals of this meeting included refining and building on Investment Cases, National Strategic Plans and Global Fund New Funding Request for 2018–2020.
This meeting was concluded leaving participants ready to embark on their mission to drive TB to zero in their locales in Pakistan. The valuable discussions that were had during this meeting will inform the future work of the coalitions represented in the room as well as the work of Zero TB coalitions in other countries including Peru, India, South Africa, Russia, and Vietnam.
Countries Represented: Bangladesh, Bulgaria, France, Pakistan, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and United States of America