The SIAPS approach to engaging the retail pharmacy sector combines strategies in the access framework and recommendations from the WHO and International Pharmaceutical Federation joint statement in 2010, which strongly emphasized the importance of pharmacists’ contributions to different tasks essential for quality TB care. The key overarching strategy is to build broad stakeholder involvement that includes national programs (NTPs), professional associations, and private sector associations and to ensure the International Standards of TB Care are integrated into private sector. At the core of access is the need to provide medicines and services that are safe, efficacious, cost-effective, and of high quality. Availability is only one aspect of ensuring access to medicines—equally important are accessibility, several studies cite private sector providers as geographically accessible and convenient; affordability, that is price and ability to pay, which perhaps remain the greatest barriers to access TB services in the private sector; and acceptability, which concerns cultural and personal preferences.
