For the last few months, CGH has been working on a report exploring opportunities for dual impact on TB and PPPR.
Everyone working in TB knows the impact that COVID-19 has had on the TB response. TB has, perhaps, been more heavily affected than any other disease. One of the reasons for this is that TB services are perfectly suited to fighting lethal respiratory pathogens, like COVID-19, and like a possible future pandemic might be. As a result, the TB community has argued, almost since the outset of the pandemic, that to fight COVID-19 and other pandemics, you need to deal with TB first.
This report set out to test whether that was true. Could countries prepare for future pandemics, deal with the aftershocks of COVID-19, and try to make up lost ground against TB? The answer is yes. As the report shows at length, there are a great many overlaps between the World Health Organization's recommended actions to prepare, prevent and respond to pandemics, and the interventions that countries will need to make to tackle TB.
The report doesn't cover everything that we need to do to tackle TB - it's long enough as it is! - but rather looks at the venn diagram of PPPR and TB interventions primarily through the lens of PPPR.
Over the coming months we'll be doing our best to raise awareness of these overlaps and encourage implementers to make the most of these opportunities to strengthen the TB response and prepare for the next pandemic. In the meantime, we hope you'll take a look at the report on our publications page!
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