Building on the Global Health Council’s January 27 forum The Global Plan to Stop TB: A 10-Year Road Map, TB and HIV/AIDS activists participating in Public Health Watch shared their experiences and perspectives on the extent to which international TB targets have been met. With perspectives from five high-burden TB countries, presentations highlighted the following key challenges to scaling up TB control in resource-strapped settings:

• HIV/AIDS;
• the rising threat of multi-drug resistant TB;
• lack of laboratory infrastructure, human resources, and diagnostic and treatment tools.

Presenters also discussed the role of bilateral and multilateral donors, including the Global Fund, USAID and PEPFAR, in supporting TB control in their countries.

Featured Speakers

• Faruque Ahmed, Director of Health Programs for BRAC, Bangladesh
• Ezio Dos Santos Filho, lawyer and longtime HIV/AIDS and TB activist, Brazil
• Jamillah Mwanjisi, Director of Media Bank, Tanzania
• Amara Soonthorndhada, Deputy Director of the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University, Thailand
• Olayide Akanni, Senior Program Officer at Journalists Against AIDS, Nigeria

A transcript and video webcast of the event are available on the Kaiser Family Foundation website at www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/hcast_index.cfm?display=detail&hc=1672.