Operational coordination of HIV-TB programs at the district level

January 20, 2006

Dear friends,

It is a great experience to participate in the HIV/AIDS-TB 2006 conference in

New Delhi which was organized by All India Institute of Medical Sciences. There

are lot of learnings and sharing of experiences. The whole conference was well

managed.

I attended this workshop with a particular objective. That is to take back home

important lessons of operational collaboration of HIV-TB program. Unfortunately

except few small attempts, real ground level hands on experience of HIV and TB

program coordination at a scale was not available in any of the presentation.

Being a hard core public health programmer this is definitely a matter of great

disappointment for me.

I strongly believe every Targeted Intervention / TI (organized by the NGOs for

HIV prevention) should have strong strategic linkages with the District TB

Control Program basically at three programmatic levels:

1) Strengthening of TB surveillance at the community level among high risk

groups and prompt referring of all suspected cases to the designated Microscopy

centre/Tuberculin Unit and ensure their investigation and treatment. (The Peer

Educators of TI program can also become the important DOTS providers) - We have

successfully done this in Sonagachi Project in Kolkata

2) Developing crucial linkages between VCCTC and TB units to ensure essential

TB treatment to the PLHAs and promoting VCCTC services to the TB affected

population

3) Support and strengthening of district level leadership (District TB Officer,

Nodal Officer HIV/AIDS, RCHO, ACMO, CMO and District AIDS Control Society) for

effective HIV TB coordination under the chairmanship of the District collector

The NGO can play very crucial role at the district level HIV TB coordination

process with proper support, capacity building and supportive supervision.

This kind of approach is cost effective and may lead to adequate community

mobilization both for TB and HIV by the involvement of one single NGO.

We are trying to implement similar kind of HIV TB coordination in one of our

city interventions under Urban HIV program of RACHNA of CARE India.

All the best,

With warm regards

Dr Sugata Mukhopadhyay

Technical Specialist, HIV/AIDS

RACHNA Program, CARE India

27 Hauz Khas Village

New Delhi 110016

Tel: 98713 77783

E-mail: <sugataids@...>

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