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Bitter pills: care givers navigating stigma, stock outs, and unfriendly formulations in Botswana
E. M. H. Mitchell

INT J TUBERC LUNG DIS 20(10):1283
Q 2016 The Union

In a thought-provoking editorial KNCV’s Dr. Ellen Mitchell reflects on an article by Stillson and colleagues on ‘Exploring challenges faced by care givers of children with tuberculosis in Botswana’. Dr. Mitchell calls on TB professionals to look at the service provision for pediatric tuberculosis from all angles and to listen more to the parents and other care givers who are responsible for the children’s daily survival.
Thus, the development of new products may benefit from care giver input, for instance in developing appropriate and patient-friendly ways to administer treatment to children.
“If we can also take seriously care givers’ concerns about commodity management, stigma and patient costs, they too will share in our enthusiasm in the powerful diagnostic and treatment options we are developing for pediatric TB … These care givers remind us that our End TB strategy also contains the crucial goal of zero suffering – a concept we still have only begun to define.”

The benchmarking tool is a self-assessment tool, meant to serve as a basis for discussions, brainstorming, and strategic planning and as a tool for monitoring progress in the realization of childhood TB policies towards alignment with WHO guidelines, in the framework of a TB program.

In the zip file there is a PDF and a word and excel document.

This tool is compressed into a zip file. If you don’t have a program to open a zip file, you can download it here for free. http://www.winzip.com/

KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation has developed a benchmarking tool to help countries to align their policies with the latest WHO guidelines on childhood TB. Agnes Gebhard presented a first version of this benchmarking tool at the recent 17th Wolfheze Workshops. Read more about this story here

A handbook for national tuberculosis control programmes

Quality assesment of chest radiography.

for District Hospitals in Resource Constrained Settings on Quality Assurance of Chest Radiography: for better TB control and Health system strengthening

for District Hospitals in Resource Constrained Settings for the Quality Improvement of Chest X-ray Reading in Tuberculosis Suspects.

A zip file containg documents for Zimbabwe guidelines an training about TB

EARLY DETECTION AND PREVENTION OF TUBERCULOSIS (TB) IN CHILDREN

The purpose of this document is to capitalize on the untapped potential of the business sector to respond to these two epidemics. Built on the 2003 guidelines on contribution of workplaces to TB control prepared jointly by the ILO and WHO, these guidelines should help capitalize on increased awareness about TB and HIV and their impact on businesses, and strengthen partnerships between national TB programmes, national HIV programmes, and the business sector to improve TB and HIV prevention, treatment and care activities.

a zip file containing a tool to Estimate Patient Costs.