The Netherlands to support national tuberculosis, leprosy programme

The Netherlands government signed a pledge of 3.9 million euros (US $3.8 million) on Wednesday for Ethiopia's tuberculosis (TB) and leprosy control programme, the Royal Netherlands Embassy in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, announced. "Within the context of poverty reduction and sector-wide approaches, the two sides decided last year to concentrate development efforts on three sectors: health, education and food security," the embassy said. Most of the money will be used to buy anti-TB drugs, laboratory reagents and equipment. The embassy said the rest would support the technical activities of the control programme at the Ethiopian Ministry of Health. The grant is part of the 24-million-euro ($23.2 million) annual budget of the Netherlands-Ethiopian Development Cooperation. The agreement, signed in Addis Ababa, covered the first year of the recently developed longer-term Tuberculosis Control Strategic Framework, and the 20-year National Health Sector Development Programme, of which the TB control programme was an important component, the embassy said. Bilateral cooperation on the control programme started five years ago. The Royal Netherlands Tuberculosis Association (RNTA) implemented and technically supported the first part of the cooperation. Instead of working through the RNTA, the embassy said, the current cooperation would be implemented directly between the Ministry of Health and the Netherlands embassy in Ethiopia. One of the most important aspects of this programme is the strengthening and expansion in Ethiopia of a modern TB treatment regimen, recommended by the World Health Organisation. The regimen is known as Directly Observed Treatment, Short-Course Chemotherapy, or DOTS, which shortens the treatment for TB and increases patient compliance, thereby improving the treatment success rate. "The agreement signed today ushers [in] the start of a new phase in Ethiopian-Netherlands cooperation in tuberculosis control," the embassy said.