TB activists to establish a global coalition

The Community Task Force (CTF) is a group of community affected by TB and TB activists and is composed of individuals who have served or are serving as community representatives in the Stop TB Partnership’s Working Groups or on its Coordinating Board.

The recent meeting of the Community Task Force and its partners took place on 4-6 February 2013 in Geneva, Switzerland. During the meeting it was felt that the CTF should open up and involve more global TB activists and advocates – restructure into the global coalition. The global coalition should be more representative of the regions (now it mostly has representatives from Africa) and better integrate and tackle other issues related to TB, for example, HIV/TB co-infection and TB/ drug use.

As a result the meeting participants have issued a Declaration of Intent that commits them to restructuring the Community Task Force (CTF) into a broader global coalition to represent communities affected by TB, multidrug-resistant TB and TB/HIV. The announcement can be found here: http://www.stoptb.org/news/stories/2013/ns13_011.asp. The coalition is planned to be launched on World TB Day, 24 March 2013.

When the group discussed the options of the composition of the global coalition it was said that it should be region and TB burden based. For Europe it means that more focus should be on Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We have also noted that current regional initiatives should be integrated in the global coalition, such as ACT! for Africa and TB Europe Coalition could serve as the regional partner/ platform for Europe region.

The small group will be working on the concept and structure of the new global coalition.

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