Dr Stephen Graham of The Union’s Child Lung Health Division has been selected to chair a new Western Pacific Region Taskforce on Child TB. The initiative came out of a meeting held in March in Viet Nam, which aimed to facilitate the development of a childhood TB action plan for the region. Eight countries participated in the meeting, which was led by Dr Graham and representatives of WHO WPRO. Both TB and child lung health experts attended.
During the course of the meeting, the countries each identified priorities in order to establish a framework over the 12 months. In addition, the taskforce will foster improved awareness and data on child TB across the region and establish national child TB working groups to support implementation of the national plans.
The participating countries were China, Cambodia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Laos, Mongolia, Philippines and Viet Nam. Plans are for the group to meet again in person in conjunction with The Union Asia-Pacific Region Conference in Sydney, Australia in 2015.
In a related effort, Dr Graham is also the lead author of the WHO child TB guidelines (2nd ed), now online at http://who.int/tb/publications/childtb_guidelines/en/, and soon-to-be released training modules.