The Stop TB Partnership's DOTS Expansion Working Group (DEWG), a network of key stakeholders in global TB control, coordinates efforts to strengthen and expand basic TB control globally with a focus on 22 high TB-burden Countries.
In many Countries, involvement of the private health care providers is crucial to bringing about effective TB care and control. WHO's Stop TB Strategy envisages engagement of all care providers using publicprivate and public-public mix approaches and the International Standards for Tuberculosis Care (ISTC). The ISTC presents 17 standards that, taken together, describe a widely accepted level of care that all health professionals, public and private, should seek to achieve in dealing with TB symptomatics and patients. One of the main intents of the ISTC is to unify approaches to diagnosis and treatment between the public and private sectors. In addition, the ISTC provides a framework by which to analyse constraints to the full range of essential TB care services and to foster and facilitate private-public collaborations. In several Countries professional associations are a powerful ally of national TB programmes and perhaps the only effective conduit through which private clinicians may be reached in a systematic manner. Mobilization of professional associations therefore could go a long way in linking private practitioners effectively to national TB programmes.