RPM Plus: Where We Work: Europe & Eurasia: Georgia

Tuberculosis (TB) continues to place a heavy burden on the world's poorest countries, despite the fact that established diagnostic procedures, medicines, and supplies exist for this disease, which are able to improve health outcomes.

Program implementation often suffers because of lack of access to and inappropriate use of pharmaceutical supplies and essential medicines.

The governments of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan have adopted the WHO developed Directly Observed Treatment, Short-Course (DOTS) strategy and have received grants of pharmaceuticals from the Global TB Drug Facility (GDF) and other donors to support the strategy's implementation.

Understanding that a prerequisite for successful DOTS and DOTS Plus project implementation is an uninterrupted supply of TB drugs, the German technical development cooperation (GTZ) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), requested that MSH/RPM Plus conduct a workshop to train participants from the three countries in the appropriate management of first- and second-line TB medicines.

The workshop was conducted in Russian in Tbilisi, Georgia, on July 26-30, 2004, and attended by all three countries. It covered the various components of a successful TB pharmaceutical management system, including selection, procurement, distribution, use, quality assurance, and monitoring.

RPM Plus conducted a follow-up workshop in July 2005 to train National TB Program (NTP) staff how to quantitatively assess their TB pharmaceutical systems. RPM Plus used its PMTB indicator-based manual [PDF - 138 KB] for training. The staffs developed methodology for data collection based on their local situations and practiced use of the data collection forms and spreadsheets for data entry.

RPM Plus is planning a third workshop in 2006 to analyze the data, identify strengths and weaknesses, recommend improvement activities, and prepare a written report of findings. The report will be shared with the respective countries' Ministries of Health and with international partners for support in carrying out the improvement activities.

The workshops were funded by USAID through the RPM Plus Program, ICRC, and GTZ/GOPA.

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