Global Partnership to Stop TB: a model of an effective public health partnership

The Global Partnership to Stop TB.

To describe the need for a partnership, its development, its aims and how it goes about its business.

The international health community finds itself working under new constraints and in the presence of new actors and opportunities, including globalisation, economic and cultural changes, lack of resources, and the need for intersectoral collaboration. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared tuberculosis a global emergency in 1993. However, political commitment to controlling the growing pandemic was lacking, and TB continued to exact its remorseless toll. The Global Partnership to Stop TB can be seen as the result of the development over the last century of progressively more powerful forms of international organisations against tuberculosis. An outline is given of the current Global Partnership to Stop TB, including its goals, its progress from values to achievements and how it functions through various bodies.

The Partnership is potentially an effective model for other public health issues. As such, it can contribute to and catalyse a new era of international cooperation.