Engage all care providers

Public-Private Mix (PPM) for TB Care and Control

• About us
• FAQs
• Meetings
• Resources
• Experiences
• PPM Subgroup

PPM news

Eighth Meeting of the Subgroup on Public-Private Mix for TB Care and Control

The eighth meeting of the Subgroup on Public-Private Mix for TB care and control (PPM Subgroup) was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 10-11 November 2012. The meeting organized in tandem with the Union Conference in Kuala Lumpur, provided a platform to share experiences and opinions of Stop TB partners, country programme managers, representatives of professional organizations, academia and researchers. On the first day the meeting showcased the Western Pacific region as a model for PPM scale up, highlighted key innovative PPM approaches in countries and discussed approaches to accelerating PPM in the context of the post 2015 TB strategy. On the second day a workshop was organized with a focus on engaging the for-profit private sector, highlighting country experiences. The presentations are available at the link below. The meeting report will be posted on this site in the coming weeks.

• To access the agenda and meeting presentations, please click here

In most resource-poor countries with a high TB-burden, patients with symptoms suggestive of tuberculosis (TB) seek care from a wide array of health-care providers. These care providers, often not linked to public sector-based national tuberculosis programmes (NTPs), may serve a large proportion of TB suspects. The size, types and roles of these care providers vary greatly within and across countries. In some settings there is a large private commercial sector and numerous non governmental organizations (NGOs) while in others there are public sector providers (such as general and specialized hospitals) that operate outside the scope of NTPs. Evidence suggests that failure to involve all care providers used by TB suspects and patients hampers case detection, delays diagnosis, leads to inappropriate and incomplete treatment, contributes to increasing drug resistance and places an unnecessary financial burden on patients.

Engaging all relevant health care providers in TB care and control through public-private mix approaches is an essential component of the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Stop TB Strategy. Public-Private Mix (PPM) for TB Care and Control represents a comprehensive approach for systematic involvement of all relevant health care providers in TB control to promote the use of International Standards for TB Care and achieve national and global TB control targets. PPM encompasses diverse collaborative strategies such as public-private (between NTP and the private sector), public-public (between NTP and other public sector care providers such as general hospitals, prison or military health services and social security organizations), and private-private (between an NGO or a private hospital and the neighborhood private providers) collaboration. PPM also implies engaging relevant care providers in prevention and management of MDR-TB and in the implementation of TB/HIV collaborative activities.

Currently, nearly all high TB-burden countries are implementing PPM activities. Reports from countries and several project evaluations have shown that PPM could help increase case detection (between 10% and 60%), improve treatment outcomes (over 85%), reach the poor and save costs.