USAID TB Local Organizations Network (LON)

SMC partners with icddr,b and USAID to fight tuberculosis in Bangladesh
SMC signed an agreement with icddr,b on September 22, 2020 for combating tuberculosis (TB) in Bangladesh under USAID supported TB Local Organizations Network (LON) Project.

Evidently, Bangladesh is one of the high TB burden countries in the world. Bangladesh possesses 7th position among the high TB burden countries. Despite the country's tremendous progress to combat the disease over the past few decades , significant efforts are necessary yet to support Bangladesh to reach the national strategic plan aligned with the EndTB 2025 and 2030 goals, in addition to achieve the targets in 2035. Global TB Report 2021 by World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that Bangladesh still has gap in Case Detection Rate (CDR). Almost 36% TB cases are still missing. The icddr,b-led consortium of four Bangladesh-based organizations - "USAID's Alliance for Combating TB in Bangladesh (ACTB)" is developing strategies to fight against TB in response to USAID's local organizations network (LON) project. As an alliance member, SMC will contribute to achieve the following two major objectives.

• Engage informal private providers to increase screening of presumptive cases and develop a mechanism to follow-up referral cases for treatment compliance.
• Involve community-level women entrepreneurs for screening and finding of presumptive cases at the community level.

USAID's ACTB is a four-year project covering the geographical area of eight (8) districts in FY 2020-2021 and another thirty two (32) districts in FY 2021-2022.

Fig: Project Area marked in red