New U.S. Program to Continue Fight Against TB

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U.S. Ambassador John R. Bass will join Minister of Labor, Health and Social Affairs Zurab Tchiaberashvili, First Lady Sandra Roloefs and the Director of the National Center of Disease Control and Public Health Nata Avaliani to launch a new $4.4 million U.S. Government program to improve tuberculosis (TB) prevention and treatment in Georgia on Thursday, April 5th at the Radisson Blu hotel in Tbilisi at 11:00 a.m. The event is open to the press.

The new four-year, $4.4 million program, implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the University Research Corporation, aims to improve active case finding and TB service quality through a strengthened National TB Control Program. The program builds on more than eight years of U.S. assistance to TB treatment and control programs in Georgia.

TB is both preventable and curable, but it still remains a leading cause of infectious disease-related death worldwide. The goal is to reach a 70% case detection rate and an 85% successful treatment of all cases by 2015. There are 6,000 patients currently registered in Georgia and about 4,500 new cases of TB are diagnosed each year in Georgia. USAID has funded TB treatment and control activities in Georgia since 2003, with support totaling $7.1 million. The U.S. government supported project has trained more than 2,740 specialized and general health staff from public and private sectors.