Implementing the Stop TB Strategy : a handbook for national tuberculosis control programmes

Overview

Since the publication of the Tuberculosis handbook by the World Health Organization in 1998, important changes have taken place in the global context in which control of tuberculosis (TB) is carried out. firstly, the dOTS strategy has been adopted by virtually all countries during the past decade, although with varying quality, and full-scale dOTS implementation has not yet been achieved. At the same time, efforts to control the disease have become increasingly patient-centred and directed towards universal access to care for all.

Taking account of these new and changing situations, the Stop TB Strategy defines specific objectives and components directed towards the overall target of millennium development goal 6: to have halted and begun to reverse the incidence of TB by 2015. This new version of the Handbook for national TB control programmes provides an overview of the broad range of approaches needed to implement all six components of the Strategy, and to achieve its goals. It is the result of efforts by many experts, building on the new knowl- edge and evidence that are behind the complexities of modern TB control; its purpose is to facilitate the work of all those who are engaged in the aim of ultimately eliminating TB.