Pakistan National Tuberculosis Control Programme

Pakistan's national tuberculosis control effort, which piloted the World Health Organization's directly observed treatment, short-course strategy, known as DOTS, in 1995. Early implementation emphasized sputum smear microscopy for diagnosis at the expense of other diagnostic tools, and the program's momentum lapsed in the years that followed, until tuberculosis was declared a national public health emergency under the Islamabad Declaration in 2001, prompting a revival of the National Tuberculosis Control Programme. Since that revival the programme has treated nearly 4 million people with quality-assured drugs while maintaining a treatment success rate above 90 percent, a marked turnaround from its uneven first years.