Involving private health care providers in delivery of TB care: global strategy.

Most poor countries have a large and growing private medical sector. Evidence suggests that a large proportion of tuberculosis patients in many high TB- burden countries first approach a private health care provider. Further, private providers manage a significant proportion of tuberculosis cases. Surprisingly though, there is virtually no published evidence on linking private providers to tuberculosis programmes. As a part of global efforts to control tuberculosis through effective DOTS implementation, the World Health Organization has recently begun addressing the issue of private providers in TB control through an evolving global strategy. As a first step, a global assessment of private providers' participation in tuberculosis programmes was undertaken. The findings of the assessment were discussed and debated in a consultation involving private practitioners, TB programme managers and policy makers. Their recommendations have contributed to the evolving global strategy called Public-Private Mix for DOTS implementation (PPM DOTS). This paper presents the guiding principles of PPM DOTS and major elements of the global strategy. These include: informed advocacy; setting-up "learning projects"; scaling-up successful projects and formulation of regional, national and local strategies; developing practical tools to facilitate PPM DOTS and pursuing an operational research agenda to help better design and shape PPM DOTS strategies. Encouraging results from some ongoing project sites are discussed. The paper concludes that concerted global efforts and local input are required for a sustained period to help achieve productive engagement of private practitioners in DOTS implementation. Such efforts have to be targeted as much towards national tuberculosis programmes as towards private providers and their associations. Continued apathy in this area could not only potentially delay achieving global targets for TB control but also undo, in the long run, the hard-earned achievements of National TB Programmes.