• TB care and treatment (DOTS expansion and strengthening): TB CARE II partners assist national programs to provide universal and early case detection to surpass the 70% target and successfully treat over 85% of those cases.
• Programmatic Management for Drug Resistant TB (PMDT): The project works to assist national programs to provide universal access to DST for suspected cases and treatment to all those with MDR TB cases.
• TB/HIV care and treatment: Our team is assisting countries to increase early case detection, expand intensified case finding, enhance airborne infection control efforts and expand access to and integrate treatment of TB and HIV in co-infected individuals.
• Health Systems Strengthening: TB CARE II seeks to fully contribute to health system strengthening as it relates to TB, particularly for improving political commitment, strengthening human resources, enhancing health information and surveillance systems, infection control, and engaging all care providers.

Some facts about tuberculosis:

• Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium M. tuberculosis.
• Worldwide, roughly one in three people carry TB. Although the majority of people do not get sick with an active infection, new infections occur on a rate of about one per second. TB is easily spread through the air when people who have the disease cough.
• In 2008, there were an estimated 9.4 million new TB cases, and 1.8 million TB deaths. TB causes more deaths worldwide than any other curable infectious disease and disproportionately affects the poor and working-age segments of society.
• There are 22 countries currently designated by the World Health Organization as high burden countries which require extra support to tackle TB. These countries are spread throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America and include India, China, Russia, South Africa, and Brazil, among others.
• One of the main factors in the resurgence of TB is the expanding HIV epidemic. TB is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV/AIDS. It is easily spread among people whose immune systems are suppressed by the AIDS virus and in some countries up to 80% of TB patients also have HIV.
• The basic regimen of TB drugs has not changed in over forty years. TB treatment is long and complicated, involving six months of daily medications which can have severe side effects.
• The key TB treatment strategy currently is the DOTS approach, for Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course. In this strategy, a patient is observed by a nurse or community health worker daily when taking their TB medications. This method is endorsed by the World Health Organization and currently implemented in the majority of countries with high rates of TB.
• In some areas of the world, one in four people with TB becomes ill with a form of the disease that can no longer be treated with standard drugs regimens. However, only an estimated 7% of all drug-resistant TB cases are diagnosed and only 60% of patients with drug resistant TB are cured.