The Union has received a grant from France Expertise International/Initiative 5% to coordinate an operational research study on a 9-month regimen for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). The study will be conducted in 9 francophone African countries. The hope is that the results of the study will lead to a change in the current international guidelines, which call for a minimum of 20 months of treatment.
Interest in testing the 9-month regimen, which was previously used successfully in Bangladesh, grew out of workshops for francophone national TB programmes organised by The Union. At the March 2012 workshop in Yaoundé, Cameroon, a protocol was discussed for an operational study to test the efficacy and the safety of this 9-month treatment regimen.
Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Niger and Rwanda opted to participate in the operational study. Since then, the countries have written protocols adapted to their own particular circumstances, but retaining the main elements of the common protocol – the inclusion criteria, therapeutic regimen and notification system.
In January 2013, The Union and the Pasteur Institute organised a 4-day workshop on the diagnosis and treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, held in Cotonou, Benin, which featured presentations by the nine countries as well as Gabon and Mali. Their national protocols were discussed extensively, and different practical points of the study were standardised.
The workshop was also attended by representatives from the World Health Organization headquarters and the TB Supranational Reference Laboratories of Antwerp and Milan. Supported by the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) and Agence Française de Développement, the workshop also covered the current tools available to diagnose MDR-TB, the data collected by the various national reference laboratories and the role of supranational laboratories.