On 26 January 2017, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine hosted the first meeting of the Coordinating Group on Implementing Activities to Reform the Healthcare System in the Area of TB Response. This first session of the Coordinating Group chaired by the Deputy Minister of Health, Oksana Syvak, was attended by partners representing government and civil society as well as representatives of the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Coordinating Group will include representatives of the Alliance: Sergiy Filippovych, Director: Treatment, Procurement and Supply Management and Yulia Chorna, Project Manager: TB Advocacy.
The group was created in order to elaborate and implement an action plan on the TB care reform in Ukraine. An important aspect of this reform is support of patient-oriented treatment of TB patients using outpatient care models. The specific objectives, which should be resolved by the government in the course of reforming the TB care, are related to capacity building and management of human resources as well as improving the effectiveness of funding in the delivery of TB care. The state, guided by the Ministry of Health, demonstrates its commitment to the reform by supporting the high-level national coordinating group.
The priority in providing support to TB patients is a focus on outpatient services. New funding models will be implemented based on the results of activities in this area. As for the resulting resources, they will be reinvested to support TB response interventions at the outpatient stage. As part of the new model of health care for TB patients, the required mechanisms of social contracting will be developed to supply TB services, in particular in the context of working with key populations.
The national coordinating group was created within the regional TB-REP project (TB in Eastern Europe and Central Asia Project on Strengthening Health Systems for Effective TB and DR-TB Control), with Alliance for Public Health being partner of this Project on behalf of TB Europe Coalition. The project is aimed at reforming the TB care system as part of the general health care reforms and is implemented in 2016-2018 with financial support of the Global Fund in 11 countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan). Principal Recipient of the Global Fund grant is the Center for Health Policies and Studies (PAS Center), with technical leadership of the WHO Regional Office for Europe.
The general goal of the project is to reduce the TB burden and to halt the spread of drug-resistant TB by ensuring political commitment and extensive use of evidence-based patient-oriented approaches in the delivery of TB prevention, care and treatment services. An important approach of the project is joining efforts at different levels – from the state to the civil society – to provide more effective TB care. TB Europe Coalition together with the Alliance for Public Health is responsible for the component of supporting advocacy efforts from the side of civil society organizations implementing the project in 11 countries. Civil society partner of the Project in Ukraine is CO “The Ukrainians against TB”. The main advocacy efforts of civil society organizations are aimed at supporting the transition to patient-oriented models of TB care with a focus on providing such care in outpatient settings.