The thirteenth meeting of the national tuberculosis programme managers

The Thirteenth Meeting of National TB Programme Managers from the WHO South-East Asia Region was held in Male, Maldives, in December 2008. Participants at the meeting included representatives of national TB programmes, technical agencies and staff from WHO headquarters, the Regional Office for South-East Asia and country offices. The meeting was organized concurrently with the Eighteenth Meeting of the National HIV/AIDS Programme Managers to allow for a day for both programmes to jointly review the progress and challenges and discuss next steps to scale up a comprehensive package of interventions for HIV-associated TB in Member States of the Region. Achievements in countries towards meeting the global targets set for TB control were presented. Key technical and programmatic issues, including interventions required to effectively respond to multi-drug resistant and HIV-associated tuberculosis were discussed and country experiences shared. Member States also presented their plans for the coming year and the technical assistance and resource requirements to effectively carry out all planned interventions were identified.