Philippines National Tuberculosis Control Program

The Philippine Department of Health's tuberculosis control effort, which adopted the World Health Organization's directly observed treatment, short-course strategy, known as DOTS, in 1996 after the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office and the Philippine Secretary of Health agreed in 1995 to commit at least half the country's WHO funding, about 2 million dollars per biennium, to a major TB control push. Sixteen of the country's 77 provinces served as initial DOTS pilot sites starting in mid-1996, and the strategy expanded steadily until more than 90 percent of the population had access to it by the end of 2001, reaching full nationwide DOTS coverage by 2003. The program's work was reinforced by public-private collaboration through the Philippine Coalition Against Tuberculosis, organized in 1994, and its treatment success rate for patients starting therapy in 2002 reached 88 percent, meeting the global target of that era.