Regional Green Light Committee for the WHO European Region face-to-face meeting and workshop with high drug-resistant tuberculosis burden countries: programmatic aspects of the implementation of new tuberculosis drugs and regimens (2018)

Copenhagen, Denmark, 18–20 June 2018

Meeting report

A face-to-face meeting of the regional Green Light Committee for the WHO European Region (rGLC/Europe) was held in Copenhagen, Denmark on 18 June 2018. The rGLC/Europe meeting was followed by a workshop on 19–20 June on the “Programmatic aspects of the implementation of new tuberculosis drugs and regimens” co-organized with the Laboratories, Diagnostics and Drug-resistance team of the Global TB Programme (GTB). The objective of the rGLC/Europe meeting and following workshop were to discuss uptake of current WHO policies on treatment and care for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) through the lens of early experience with the introduction of new drugs and shorter regimens in implementing countries, including the experience of the endTB project in European Region countries. The meeting also aimed to assist countries in the process of revising their national MDR-TB treatment policies based on current WHO recommendations and programmatic experience. Workshop participants included members of the rGLC/Europe; representatives from the Stop TB Partnership, the Global Drug Facility, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Unitaid; country representatives from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan; staff from the WHO Headquarters Global TB Programme and from the Joint Tuberculosis, HIV and Viral Hepatitis Programme of the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Based on the discussions of the three-day meeting, a set of recommendations were proposed for WHO and partners.