Advisory Committee meeting for the new TB Action Plan of the WHO European Region, 2016–2020
3 October 2014, Copenhagen, Denmark - The TB and M/XDR-TB Control Programme (TBM) held the first meeting of the Advisory Committee on Friday, 3 October, at the Regional Office in Copenhagen, Denmark, to discuss the new TB Action Plan for the WHO European Region 2016–2020. The Committee includes representatives from high- and low-TB-incidence countries, patient representatives and key partner organizations, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) and WHO Headquarters.
The meeting was an important and successful milestone for reviewing the achievements and remaining challenges of the current "Consolidated Action Plan to Prevent and Combat Multidrug- and Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in the WHO European Region, 2011–2015", as well as discussing the strategic directions, targets and areas of interventions of the new Action Plan.
The new TB Action Plan, 2016-2020, will be in line with the Post-2015 Global TB Strategy and the Health 2020 policy framework. Following the guidance and input from the advisory committee, TBM will first prepare a draft framework of the new TB Action Plan, which will then be fine tuned after an in-house consultation with other programmes and divisions. The new Plan will pay particular attention to Health 2020 as the guiding principle to address inequities in TB care.
The next steps include a Region-wide consultation of the draft Plan with National TB Programme (NTP) managers, partners and civil society organizations on 27 November 2014 at the WHO European Regional Office in Copenhagen, Denmark. The second meeting of the Advisory Committee is foreseen in February 2015.
The Plan will be finalized through a web-based consultation and an additional consultation with NTP managers and partners at Wolfheze workshops, a series of workshops aimed to strengthen TB control in the WHO European Region, which will be held at the end of May/beginning of June 2015.
Once finalized, the Plan will be ready for submission to the 65th session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe along with the report of implementation of the Consolidated Action Plan to Prevent and Combat M/XDR-TB.
Source: WHO/Europe
