WMJ 03 2010 - World Medical Association

WMA news
Secretary General’s Report
(October 2009-April 2010) to 185 th Council
Policy & Advocacy
1.1 Multi Drug Resistant
Tuberculosis Project
During the third phase of the Lilly
MDR-TB partnership we finalised the
TB refresher course for physicians and
launched it during the GA 2009 in Delhi.
The purpose of the TB refresher course
is to set the baseline for basic knowledge
on the subject, with the existing Multi-
Drug Resistant TB course providing more
advanced knowledge. However, because
the refresher course was developed after
the more advanced MDR-TB course, the
layout of the MDR-TB required some
adaptation to conform more closely with
the layout of the refresher course. The TB
refresher course was nominated by the
United States Centre of Disease Control
(CDC) as educational highlight. Over
time, both courses will be translated into
different languages. The Georgian Medical
Association kindly offered to translate the
TB refresher course.
The WHO is in the final process of developing
a policy on ethics in the TB setting,
and will launch the policy during a conference
and workshop in Athens just prior to
the 185 th Council Session in Evian. The
WMA was invited to address the issues in
the policy related to health professionals
and Dr. Jeff Blackmer from the Canadian
Medical Association kindly offered to draft
To increase the outreach of our TB and
MDR TB educational activities WMA
held train-the-trainer courses in TB and
MDR-TB based on the 2 existing training
materials in South Africa and India. In
April of this year, WMA and the Chinese
Medical Association (ChMA) organised
a third workshop in Hangshuang with the
help of the Chinese Thoracic Society. Thirty
leaders of TB hospitals from all over China
took part in the training and will pass
on their knowledge to their colleagues. In
China, TB hospitals and CDC Centres are
the only facilities that treat TB patients. The
government and the provincial health department
honoured the activities of WMA
and ChMA.
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