Involving private practitioners in tuberculosis control : issues, interventions, and emerging policy framework

Overview

Among the issues facing global tuberculosis control today, the one of great importance — involvement of private practitioners in DOTS implementation — has received far less attention than it deserves.Although the problem has long been recognised, little is yet known about effective ways to solve it.To begin addressing this issue, the communicable diseases cluster undertook a global assessment in 1999-2000.This involved discussions with key players in the public and private sectors in diverse country settings as well as appraisals of ongoing initiatives in collaboration with private practitioners.On a closer analysis of a wide variety of mostly undocumented country-experiences and field projects, a framework to aid policy development emerged.This document presents the findings as well as the framework to address involvement of private practitioners in tuberculosis control globally.

This document is being published with a clear purpose. It is to share available knowledge and experiences on the subject with policy makers and national and local TB programme managers and make recommendations of experts available to them.We hope that on the basis of these, locally appropriate ways of involving private practitioners in DOTS implementation will be tried out and documented.This will help create an evidence-base for achieving an effective PPM for TB control.Such an evidence-base will also help delineate more concrete guidelines that may be published subsequently.