Joint Partners Forum for strengthening and aligning TB diagnosis and treatment

The overall goal of the Joint Partners Forum is to bring together representatives from country TB control programmes, international institutions and initiatives, non-governmental organizations, academic and research institutes from developed and developing countries, patient communities, the TB Supranational Reference Laboratory network, industry representatives and funding agencies, working in partnership to address the challenges of increasing access to early diagnosis and treatment of all persons with TB, including drug-resistant TB and TB/HIV.

Meeting objectives

• Provide an overview of the WHO END-TB strategy to control the global TB epidemic post-2015;
• Present priorities and achievements of the Global Laboratory Initiative and Global Drug-resistant TB Initiative;
• Disseminate developments in WHO policy guidance on TB diagnostics and new drugs, and provide updates on the TB diagnostics pipeline and clinical trials for new drugs and regimens;
• Share lessons learned and challenges for wide-scale implementation of Xpert MTB/RIF and other rapid diagnostic tests to ensure effective use of resources and identify synergies with TB/HIV integrated activities;
• Evaluate the status of the SRL network and its activities;
• Share best practices for the alignment of diagnosis and treatment for the programmatic management of drug-resistant TB (PMDT); and
• Present progress of regional initiatives for scale-up of laboratory strengthening and PMDT.

The Joint Partners Forum is an open meeting, though pre-registration is essential. Please register your participation via email to Ms. Lynne Harrop (HarropL@who.int) using this registration form no later than April 11.

To download the preliminary agenda for the meeting, click here.