In an effort to increase coordination and collaboration on tuberculosis activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and maximize the CDC’s impact on global TB efforts, the agency is consolidating TB and HIV activities under a revamped program in the CDC’s Center for Global Health, changing the Division of Global HIV/AIDS to the Division of Global HIV and TB.
The Division of Global HIV and TB will merge staff from several CDC HIV and TB programs into one team to develop and implement a CDC vision and mission to address TB, multidrug-resistant TB, and HIV-associated TB in high priority, high burden countries. Staff from the Division of Global HIV/AIDS will be joined by staff from the Global TB Coordination Office and staff from the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention’s Division of TB Elimination’s International Research and Program Branch. The TB Trials Consortium and the Clinical Research Branch will remain with the Division of TB Elimination.
The division will be headed by Dr. Shannon Hader, who currently serves as Director of the Division of Global HIV/AIDS at the CDC.
“This move will establish an organizational home for global TB activities, where priorities for programming and support can be optimally coordinated and resources leveraged to achieve maximum impact,” wrote CDC Center for Global Health Director Thomas Kenyon in an email.
“The reality is that TB anywhere is TB everywhere,” Kenyon wrote. “This is why the challenges of addressing TB, especially in high burden countries, must be met with a coordinated and focused global response.”
Source: Science Speaks