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HIV and tuberculosis

Good practice guide: Community-based TB/HIV integration

TB afflicts almost nine million people a year and kills more than one million, sparing noone – young, old, rich, poor, male or female. The burden of this age-old killer falls disproportionately on the people who have the fewest resources to cope with it. The poor, the very young, the elderly, people living with HIV, drug users, prisoners, and other groups who are marginalised by society represent the populations most affected.

TB kills more women of reproductive age each year than all pregnancy-related conditions combined, and it is the fourth leading cause of death in girls and young women between the ages of 10 and 19 in low income countries. Despite the need to combat TB, most governments and their national TB programmes often lack the political will and the human and financial resources to do so effectively.

The global community has set an ambitious vision for itself: a TB-free world.

Getting there will require a massive, coordinated, and urgent mobilisation of all available resources – human, financial, and technical. There is a need for new drugs that can treat TB more quickly and effectively. We need to speed up the uptake of new, rapid diagnostic tests. We must redouble our efforts to find an effective vaccine to prevent TB. And health systems need to be strengthened to be able to deliver these new products efficiently to the people who need them most.

In this context, there is an urgent need to engage actively with the community-based organisations that are already so important in strengthening and supporting our formal health systems.

This guide by the HIV/AIDS alliance will provide practical information and tools needed to get started working on TB. It provides information on TB/HIV, highlights the kinds of TB/HIV activities community organisations can support, discusses how to engage effectively with the national TB programme and shows how to fund and monitor the TB activities.

It also includes an accompanying workbook to guide you through a step-by-step process to plan and implement effective activities. This guide is intended for use by CBOs, other civil society organisations (CSOs), and additional groups that work in HIV or other areas of health and want to incorporate TB activities into their programming. It is useful for organisations that are just starting to work in TB as well as those with more experience. (2013)

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