Turkmenistan Launches First Rural TB-DOTS Pilot Site
On October 4, 2006, USAID and its partner Project HOPE assisted the Ministry of Health and Medical Industry of Turkmenistan in opening the country’s first rural pilot for TB-DOTS treatment in the Serdar region. This expansion will make the WHO-recommended tuberculosis (TB) treatment available to an additional 62,000 people in the predominantly agricultural western Turkmenistan.
Turkmenistan’s National TB-DOTS Program envisions a gradual expansion of DOTS (which stands for Directly Observed Treatment Short-course) program to cover the entire country by 2009. Until recently, the program was implemented only in Turkmenistan’s larger cities and covered only about 40 percent of the population. Thanks to new USAID pilots, now it covers half the population. The Turkmen Government supported TB-DOTS expansion through in-kind contributions for renovation of the TB hospital and rapid issuance of necessary regulatory documents. Other international donors contributed laboratory equipment, reagents, and TB drugs.
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| USAID helps to introduce the DOTS strategy into the primary health care system of Turkmenistan |
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