Centre for Health Solutions – Kenya (CHS), Chief Executive Officer, Dr Paul Wekesa chairs e-poster session titled, Matching people and numbers: the role of TB data quality in ending TB at the recently concluded 50th Union World Conference on Lung Health held in Hyderabad, India on October 30 – November 2, 2019.
Centre for Health Solutions – Kenya (CHS) participated in the 50th Union World Conference on Lung Health held in Hyderabad, India on October 30 – November 2, 2019. The theme of the conference was ‘Ending the Emergency: Science, Leadership, Action’, with a focus on ensuring commitments become action, and that lifesaving targets are met.
The annual conference was the world’s largest gathering of clinicians, policy makers, public health managers, researchers and advocates working to end the suffering caused by lung disease, with a focus specifically on the challenges faced by low and middle-income countries. Some 3,500 delegates from over 80 countries attended the event.
CHS’ participation in the conference was through the support of its USAID funded Tuberculosis Accelerated Response and Care II activity (TB ARC II). Through a variety of symposia, posters, and workshops, CHS staff, lead by CEO Dr Paul Wekesa, shared experiences and expertise on a range of topics including: Key questions answered by the recording and reporting (R&R) system indicators and tools; How to tabulate and analyse TB data at facility level; Action on the ground: using the ECHO virtual community of practice model to promote health equity by building local health workforce capacity; and Matching people and numbers: the role of TB data quality in ending TB.
“The conference offered us a networking opportunity. We were able to set harmonise meetings with our various stakeholders who are important for our current and future work as well as meet TB players from across the world,” Dr Paul notes.
“We were able to share some of the important work that we have been able to do to reduce the burden of TB in Kenya, which was the adoption of Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) now that other countries are learning from Kenya and how to make the ECHO platform work for TB as well as the TB data4action training which is a co-creation of International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) and CHS as an impactful tool for monitoring and understanding at the facility level and empowering healthcare providers to use their data for decision making,” Dr Paul adds.
TB ARC II activity also partially facilitated the attendance of the Francisca Mukami, a clinician from Tharaka Nithi county to share her TB courage story about working with children suffering from TB and her experience on the child friendly TB medicines that Kenya was the first country to roll out in 2016.
Among the key announcements made in the conference was a two thirds price reduction in key preventative TB drug Rifapentine through a partnership between Sanofi, Unitaid and the Global Fund. The agreement brings Rifapentine 150mg tablets down from €13.60/pack of 24 tablets to a price of €4.62/pack of 24 tablets, a 66 percent discount. The discounted price will be available to the public sectors of low-income countries, lower-middle income countries, and upper middle-income countries with a high burden of TB and TB-HIV Kenya included.
Delegates were also able to discuss the recently released World Health Organization´s (WHO) 2019 Global TB Report. The report confirms that TB remains the single most lethal infectious disease globally, surpassing HIV/AIDS, killing approximately 1.6 million people annually, and the end of TB will remain out of reach until national leaders step up. According to the report, Kenya is among the high burden countries that has made progress in terms of reducing the incidence, and TB related morbidity, and mortality.
Through the USAID funded TB ARC II activity, CHS is continuing its investments in reducing the high burden of TB in Kenya. This is by collaboratively working with the National TB Program and various stakeholders including the county governments, civil societies, implementing partners, private sector among others.
