In March 2000, the Amsterdam Declaration to Stop TB called for increased political commitment and financial resources to reach the targets for global TB control by 2005. In May 2000, a World Health Assembly (WHA) resolution restated this call. In response to both the Amsterdam Declaration and the WHA resolution, National Tuberculosis Programme (NTP) managers of the 22 high-burden countries, technical partners, financial partners, and the global TB network of WHO agreed to develop a Global DOTS Expansion Plan (GDEP) at the first DOTS Expansion Working Group meeting in Cairo in November 2000.
The “DOTS Expansion” Working Group (DEWG) is an inter-institutional arrangement between WHO and many partners involved in the issue of expanding the coverage of DOTS, the WHO recommended strategy for tuberculosis control. It is one of the six working groups of the Stop TB Partnership. Two other implementation working groups exist: one on TB/HIV and another one on DOTS-plus for MDR-TB. In addition, there are three working groups on new tools: TB vaccine development, TB diagnostics and TB drug development. Their activities should feed into DOTS expansion.
