World TB Day Response From Michel Kazatchkine
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria shares your concerns about access to TB screening for people living with HIV.
The Global Fund recognizes that to achieve successful outcomes progress in implementing core TB-HIV collaborative services should be greatly accelerated. Hence, the Global Fund Board has decided that all HIV proposals should include HIV-TB collaborative activities. Similarly, all tuberculosis proposals should include HIV/TB collaborative activities. This is based on the lessons learned from previous rounds and recognition of the inadequate attention that countries pay to HIV-TB co-infection.
A fact sheet for the planning and scaling up of TB/HIV co-infection control activities will be available for round 9 proposal preparations. Countries, together with technical partners, are encouraged to be more ambitious, and better assess their needs, and accordingly plan and prepare high-quality proposals. Members of the Technical Review Panel will be requested to pay special attention to TB-HIV control activities in future proposals rounds.
We do hope that these measures will ensure universal access of TB and HIV prevention and care and avert unnecessary deaths.
Thank you
Michel Kazatchkine
