SIAPS mobilized stakeholders from the Swaziland National AIDS Program (SNAP) and the National Tuberculosis Control Program (NTCP) to introduce and implement the Sentinel Site-based Active Surveillance System for Antiretroviral and Anti-TB (SSASSA) treatment programs. SIAPS partnered with the Pharmacovigilance Unit of the MOH to create the protocol and tools for the electronic SSASSA system, and developed a patient recruitment system at HIV and TB … Read more
To assess the readiness and willingness of retail drug dispensers in the private sector to participate in TB case detection, SIAPS conducted a baseline survey among pharmacies and accredited drug dispensing outlets (ADDOs) in the regions of Morogoro and Dar es Salaam. Drug dispensers in 122 pharmacies and 173 ADDOs were surveyed to assess TB knowledge and practices, and to inform the development … Read more
Swaziland, working to combat two concurrent epidemics of HIV and tuberculosis (TB), has recently intensified nationwide HIV testing and TB case finding campaigns. However, these efforts have been hampered by routine stock-outs of key TB, laboratory, HIV and AIDS, and other health commodities. In December 2011, 50% of tracer products were stocked out at the central level, while 23% of tracer products were … Read more
Assessments conducted in 2013 on the management of TB drugs in Ukraine highlighted specific pharmaceutical management challenges, particularly in terms of data collection, capacity constraints, data quality, and frequency of reporting. Of note, cases of TB within the penitentiary system―roughly 15% of all TB cases in Ukraine―were poorly tracked; even when available, data from the penitentiary system were not integrated with the information system at … Read more
A number of low resource countries are facing a severe and prolonged shortage of health workers, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector where pharmacists, pharmacy assistants, and technicians are becoming especially scarce. With treatment programs, such as those for HIV/AIDS and TB, expanding in many countries, more pharmacists and pharmacy assistants are required to provide effective services. Additionally, overstretched pharmacists and other healthcare workers are often … Read more
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), poor-quality medicines and inadequate storage conditions are among the contributing factors that result in poor tuberculosis (TB) treatment outcomes and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. The recommended temperature to retain the quality of TB medicines is below 25°C, but at the peripheral level in Bangladesh, most TB medicines are stored at … Read more
La Reforma del Sector de la Salud en la República Dominicana contempla la organización de un Sistema Único de Gestión del Suministro de Medicamentos e Insumos (SUGEMI) y la prestación de servicios de salud a través de los Servicios Regionales de Salud (SRS). La etapa inicial de implementación del SUGEMI destacó la gestión del suministro … Read more
By Kelly Sawyer, Technical Associate – TB An 18-point anonymous, global satisfaction survey of over 2,000 users of e-TB Manager from 9 countries yielded a 76% response rate. A web-based tool for managing all the information needed by national tuberculosis (TB) control programs, e-TB Manager integrates data across all aspects of TB control. The user … Read more
In April 2015, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Janssen Therapeutics officially launched the bedaquiline donation initiative. As part of this initiative, Janssen committed to providing bedaquiline at no cost to 30,000 patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) over a four-year period. Bedaquiline is the first anti-TB medicine to be approved by the U.S. Food … Read more
Georgia is one of the first countries to benefit from the USAID‑Janssen Therapeutics bedaquiline (BDQ) donation program. Along with delamanid, BDQ is one of only two new TB medicines released to the market in over 40 years. These medicines are being used for the treatment of MDR-TB patients, as well as TB patients who have … Read more
