National TB Control Program (NTP) Islamabad organized its two-day 53rd Inter-Provincial Meeting (IPM) to review the progress of TB care activities and future plans of the program recently at a hotel in Islamabad. It was attended by national and provincial program managers, unit heads, GF objective coordinators, M&E staff, PRL focal persons, technical and implementing partners.
The first day of the Meeting started with the welcome address by Dr. Nasir Mahmood Khan, National Program Manager, NTP. In his address he stressed the need to have better coordination and consultation amongst provincial tb control program and partners. He also emphasized on the programmatic challenges including missing cases from notification, stagnant case detection, poor contact tracing, low registration of retirement cases, implementing universal DST, low DR tb enrolment, effective and sustainable involvement of private sector, scale up rapid diagnosis of tb cases.
Dr. Khawaja Laeeq Ahmad of Technical Unit NTP presented National Data (Trend & Analysis), Dr. Sabira Tahseen of NRL Unit NTP spoke on TB Laboratory Updates, Dr. Syed Hussain Hadi from PPM Unit NTP presented PPM Presentation, Dr. Abdul Ghafoor from MDR Unit NTP gave MDR Presentation and Dr. Razia Kaniz Fatima of Research Unit NTP spoke on Operational Research Updates.
Later, Dr. Aminullah, PTP Manager Balochistan, Dr. Malik Niaz, PTP Manager KP, Dr. Aamir Nazir, PTP Manager Punjab and Dr. Aijaz Hussain Ursani, Director PTP Sindh gave provincial presentations while Dr. Manzoor Ahmad – Program Manager AJK, Dr. Muhammad Riaz, Program Manager FATA, Dr. Saleem Uddin, PTP Manager GB and Dr. Muhammad Tahir, DHO ICT gave regional presentations including Progress Updates, Issues, Challenges and Way Forward.
