Bangladesh National Tuberculosis Control Programme

Bangladesh's national tuberculosis control effort, which in 1965 consisted mainly of curative services delivered through dedicated TB clinics and hospitals, before expanding to 124 upazila health complexes during the country's Second Health and Population Plan of 1980 to 1986 and being operationally integrated with leprosy control under a Mycobacterial Disease Control unit during the following plan period. A 1990 World Bank study found case detection and cure rates of only about 10 and 40 percent respectively, prompting the National Tuberculosis Control Programme to adopt the World Health Organization's directly observed treatment, short-course strategy from November 1993, piloted in four upazilas and expanded to all 460 upazilas by June 1998 and to full district coverage by 2007. The programme reached its target 70 percent case detection rate in 2006 and has sustained treatment success rates above 90 percent since 2005, with the nongovernmental organization BRAC, which had run its own pilot TB programme since 1984, formalizing nationwide DOTS collaboration with the government under a 1994 memorandum of understanding.