Ghana National Tuberculosis Control Programme

Ghana's National Tuberculosis Control Programme grew out of a much older lineage of TB control work: the Ghana Tuberculosis Service was formally established with the appointment of its first Director in 1959, following decades in which TB experts in what was then the Gold Coast worked to convince the colonial government that tuberculosis was a serious problem, and the Ghana Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis was founded in July 1954. The modern programme took shape after 1991, when Ghana's Director of Medical Services recognized how poor the country's TB situation had become; a 1992 conference of regional directors in Ho reached consensus on the need for a dedicated control programme, funding support was sought from Denmark's development agency DANIDA, and Dr. Eugene Nyarko became the programme's first Program Manager in 1993 after completing a World Health Organization fellowship. Implementation began in 1994 with training sessions rolled out across three regions, the same year Ghana adopted the World Health Organization's DOTS strategy for tuberculosis treatment, and by 2000 the country had achieved 100 percent DOTS coverage under the World Health Organization's own definition.