WHO Releases Updated Guidance on Strategic Planning for Tuberculosis
World Health Organisation. Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
The World Health Organization (WHO) released new guidance to support the National Strategic Planning (NSP) for Tuberculosis (TB) response. The guidance encourages the use of a people-centric focus in the development of NSP.
It essentially highlights the importance of government stewardship and ownership, promotes alignment with national health strategy and other health programmes, and emphasises multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral engagement as one of the key steps for multisectoral accountability for TB.
“The guidance builds on the latest WHO guidelines and emphasises the need for strengthening accountability across all sectors in the NSP, in close alignment with the broader health and development agenda in the country,” said Dr Tereza Kasaeva, director of WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Program.
The announcement further reports him saying, “it highlights the importance of comprehensive and inclusive engagement of relevant stakeholders and partners, including those from civil society, during NSP development and implementation to build ownership and facilitate planning and roll-out of quality TB services that are responsive to the needs of people and affected communities”.
NSP for TB is a key document that guides the national tuberculosis response through interventions within and beyond the health sector outlining the overall goals, strategies and interventions prioritised by national health authorities and stakeholders, and how these are coordinated across various sectors in line with the latest WHO guidelines and tools.
WHO further believes that the Guidance for national strategic planning for tuberculosis was developed to better align with global commitments and the latest developments in TB and in public health and builds on lessons learned from using the 2015 toolkit. This document will be complemented by the Guidance for conducting reviews of TB programmes, which will be published by the end of this year.
The guidance is intended for use in developing standalone TB strategic plans, or in developing TB interventions as part of multi-disease or national health sector plans. It describes good practices and steps for developing a TB NSP in line with WHO’s End TB Strategy, and the proposed structure and components of the TB NSP.
Furthermore, a webinar to present the new guidance and share perspectives and experiences from countries, civil society and partners will be held on Tuesday, 6 September 2022, 13:30 – 15:00 (CEST/GMT+2).
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