Tuberculosis

Anouk van der Stam, Courtesy of Photoshare. A young man in the Nagwa slum area of Benares, North India registers in the local DOTS program for tuberculosis treatment.

MEASURE Evaluation’s tuberculosis (TB) activities aim to strengthen capacity for M&E of TB programs at national and sub-national levels and ensure that the information generated is used for program decision-making and policy setting.

MEASURE Evaluation published the Compendium of Indicators for Monitoring and Evaluating National Tuberculosis Programs. Its aim is to achieve uniformity in defining indicators to allow comparisons over time and between different programs.

To reinforce the concepts of the compendium, MEASURE Evaluation conducted four regional workshops in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe from April 2005 to May 2006, reaching over 80 TB professionals in 29 countries.

In addition, MEASURE Evaluation provided technical assistance to the National Leprosy and Tuberculosis Programme in Kenya and to the National Tuberculosis Program in Vietnam in the form of support for the development of national TB M&E plans.

Both the workshops and technical assistance to the national TB programs provided opportunities for MEASURE Evaluation to build M&E capacity, standardize existing indicators, and expand M&E systems to include new TB initiatives such as DOTS expansion, TB/HIV, social mobilization, and MDR-TB. Organizations such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria should continue to expand these programs while emphasizing the need for strong, effective M&E systems.