Challenge TB

Challenge

Ranked seventh as a high TB-burden country, Bangladesh’s population living in low income areas battles infectious diseases every single day. TB, being a leading cause of death, killed 73,000 women, children and men in 2015 alone. This could have been prevented if those affected had received attention and proper care.

Unfortunately, access to TB treatment is based on the awareness of the disease and the treatment options, which the majority of people – living in overcrowded and poorly ventilated areas – is unfamiliar with, making the disease difficult to contain.

Thus, there is a need to strengthen Bangladesh’s National TB Control Program (NTP) by intensifying active TB case location efforts based on a combination of need and available synergies, using a partnership approach.  This should lead to increase patient’s access to TB screening and timely initiation of treatment.

Our Approach

IRD in partnership with MSH and KNCV is implementing USAID’s TB strategy under Challenge TB flagship program in Bangladesh. Under this program, IRD is providing technical assistance to strengthen Bangladesh’s National TB Control Program to reduce morbidity, mortality and transmission of the disease.

The program is aiming to improve access to patient centric TB care services through preventing the disease progression and strengthening TB service delivery platforms. In order to attain this objective, the program has been designed to control TB infection with a holistic approach, by introducing treatment options with different arms catering needs of children, women and adults so no one is left behind.

Challenge TB facilitates NTP in active case finding and demand creation for new drugs for all types of DR-TB.  Apart from that, it adopts both public-private and international TB treatment mechanisms to end this epidemic by 2032.

Impact

The program expects to reduce TB mortality to 35% and 20% reduction in TB incidence by 2020.