The WHO has collaborated with the Ministry of Health in Armenia to strengthen its control program against TB. It embraces a scrutiny of Armenia’s national TB policy, prevention strategies, systematic screenings, labor migrants, and relocating populations.
WHO’s team, in consultation with external consultants evaluated the country’s national surveillance of tuberculosis in terms of trends in incidence, prevalence, mortality, and registration systems that altogether would depict the progress since 2019.
Control of transmission and the ability to reach the goal of the elimination of TB by 2030 will depend on systematic screening and preventive treatment. WHO’s targeted technical assistance is built upon the great strides taken towards the direction of TB elimination in Armenia, which, through enhanced primary health care services, reduced TB case registration rates by an impressive 36.3% from 2019 to 2023, besides improving treatment success rates for MDR-TB patients to 72.3% for the cohort of 2021.
To this end, WHO/Europe has conducted a workshop on TB health workers from all the primary health facilities in Armenia. According to Dr. Siddhartha Data, the WHO Representative in Armenia, while presenting his remarks for the event, “the role that health professionals at the community level will play in controlling TB is important.” He continued, “building capacity on prevention and screening of TB is key in achieving the elimination target by 2030 and is thus in support of Ministry of Health goals on building capability of the health workforce.”.
In the framework of the workshop, WHO experts made recommendations regarding updated preventive treatment and screening, based on best practice around the world and critical analysis of TB cases and contact tracing. According to Dr. Asya Movsisyan, a doctor at Yerevan TB, “The most important moment during this workshop has turned to share the latest thoughts by involving further professional development for her colleagues.”.
WHO will continue to collaborate with the Ministry of Health and other partners to strengthen TB surveillance, prevention, and systematic screening in Armenia, especially for labor migrants. The TB prevention and systematic screening review is part of the regional initiative under the USAID umbrella.
