The fight against tuberculosis is not just a matter for the Ministry of Health” is the message that WHO/AFRO has reminded the heads of national tuberculosis programmes in West and Central Africa. During the telephone meeting held on Thursday 29 July 2021 between WARN/CARN-TB member countries, attended by experts from WHO/TDR and WHO/GTB, discussions were held on the implications of the specific nature of tuberculosis for the development of effective control strategies. Far from being exclusively a health problem, the disease has major social determinants which greatly influence the results of treatment in the short, medium and long term. The aim of this meeting was therefore to discuss ways of taking the various social causes and repercussions of tuberculosis into account in national control strategies.
To this end, two key themes were developed. These were the implementation of the WHO’s multisectoral accountability framework for tuberculosis, and the use of public-private partnerships to strengthen the various aspects of tuberculosis control. At the end of the various discussions, the participants agreed on the need to involve all the other sectors in addition to the health sector, in order to be able to address the challenge of tuberculosis in a comprehensive and effective way, and thus get closer to the international targets and objectives for eliminating tuberculosis.