A session on Active Case Finding and LTBI management in risk groups, including persons living with HIV was organised by the Regional WHO Office for Europe, KNCV, and the ECDC at the 17th Wolfheze Workshops and 13th WHO National TB Programme Managers’ Meeting, held in the Hague on 27-29th May 2015. The session was chaired by Gerard de Vries (KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation) and Alberto Matteelli (WHO/HQ), and facilitated by Knut Lonnroth (WHO/HQ) and Anissa Sidibe (WHO/HQ), with Connie Erkens (KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation) and Andrei Dadu (WHO/EURO) acting as rapporteurs. The objective of the LTBI component was to provide a platform to discuss challenges, opportunities and approaches to improve the country-level implementation and monitoring of the WHO guidelines on LTBI management in the European region.
The session began with an introductory presentation on the recently published WHO LTBI management guidelines this was followed by a presentation on the results of a survey on LTBI policies and practices conducted in the WHO European region. These opening presentations set the scene for the subsequent group working sessions, for which participants were separated into two groups, high incidence vs. low-incidence based on a cut off of 20/100,000).
The discussion questions for the High incidence group focused on bottlenecks of IPT implementation among PLHIV and child contacts
- Specific Implementation for LTBI management in high (MDR) burden countries: Country examples Azerbaijan and Russia
- Implementation and monitoring of LTBI activities. Country examples United Kingdom and the Netherlands