TB Day 2005: “The Expertise is at the Grassroots”`
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I totally agree with Patrick Friel of the United States [see Patrick’s posting discussing the centrality of TB in the fifth round of funding by the Global Fund by clicking here: http://eforums.healthdev.org/read/messages?id=4673,Mod] that while the Global Fund supposedly focused on the three diseases (AIDS, TB and Malaria), frankly speaking, AIDS and TB programmes are not harmonized in each country’s approach [to treating the diseases]. For instance in the Philippines, a TB high-burden country, TB and AIDS are separate, parallel funded programs [without obvious links to each other]. Most deaths of PWA [in the Philippines] is from TB that is managed quite late or has never been managed at all.

CCMs of each country should be well informed of what actually is happening in their communities. However, in most cases, they are not even immersed in the communities being served by the Global Fund funding. Members of most CCMs are high level people who you will not see in the communities. How would one expect them to know what needs to be included with the next round of proposals to be submitted?

Capacity building for CCM members at some aspects of assessing community needs and getting immersed is needed. Most of the expertise in this area comes from the grassroots itself. CCMs at the same time should be inviting community people into to their meetings. This will not happen if CCM meetings continue to be closed-door meeting where non members cannot get into and listen to the discussion and observe the processes happening in each of the meeting. These meetings should be transparent to stakeholders especially those people on the ground. Minutes of their meetings should be open to every John and Jane Doe who wants to see and make their own evaluation. I think community people have also the right to conduct their own assessment and evaluation of their country CCM and how the GF and see how they are doing.

I strongly suggest that the Global Fund in Geneva considers a harmonized TB and HIV programme, and that it insists on programs that integrate a TB program into proposals for HIV in the next rounds submission. This needs to happen for the sake of humanity – because many people with HIV are dying from TB.

Celina
palliativerp@yahoo.ca