Mekong - U.S. Partnership
Myanmar's National Tuberculosis Program (NTP) currently only covers 38 out of over 300 townships in the country for programmatic MDR-TB management. This means that people who contract MDR-TB may need to travel to a different township to be diagnosed and treated. In response, CAP-TB aims to strengthen the NTP's capacity by means of innovative grassroots structures like "TB Champions" — people trained to spread TB knowledge and health practices within their workplace and communities.
The workplace has been identified as an appropriate place to spread the word on TB awareness. The picture below depicts a recent CAP-TB led a training session, using the TB Champion approach, at a noodle factory in the city of Monywa, east of Mandalay. In the session the Champion distributed literature and discussed the need for community vigilance and participation for identifying, and supporting TB patients. These discussions, and example of community level support, have been proven to be an effective method for rapidly scaling up Programmatic Management of Drug-resistant Tuberculosis (PMDT) in Myanmar– and thus defeat TB and MDR-TB.
Source: Health Matters Newsletter RDMA/Office of Public Health
