# Japan's Contribution to Global Efforts to Combat Tuberculosis

Approximately nine million patients infected with tuberculosis are said to arise every year, and 80% of these are concentrated in 22 countries. Of these, Japan has been providing comprehensive cooperation for China, the Philippines, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Cambodia and so forth, including building and improving facilities, supply of pharmaceutical products and screening equipment, and providing technical cooperation for screening and medical treatment. Among these, the key items are providing technical guidance for fostering human resource of developing countries and building their capacity through the dispatch of experts.

To reduce tuberculosis morbidity, mortality, and transmission, a strategy known as directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS) is being promoted throughout the world, under the leadership of the WHO. This is a comprehensive strategy under strong government commitment with the following pillars: rapidly detecting TB through provision of examinations using microscopes (sputum examinations) for patients with long-term coughing problems etc., support for patients by medical professionals and volunteers over a long term of six months or more to ensure that medicine is being taken properly, creating a system to ensure stable supply of the necessary drugs, and performing evaluation to determine whether the overall measures are being implemented correctly.

Practicing pathological history

Photo: RIT

Practicing anatomy

Photo: RIT

Japan is providing technical support for the

DOTS strategy through experts on a variety of levels, and it has been fostering the human resources necessary for the measures. In particular, human resource development through the Research Institute of Tuberculosis, Japan Anti-Tuberculosis Association (JATA) has produced over the past 40 years more than 1,800 people from 91 countries including a minister for health, officials responsible for TB policy, WHO experts, and the committed doctors combating TB at the frontlines of the disease in a developing country.

In combination with the efforts mentioned above, Japan is implementing a diverse range of precise technical guidance and human resource development in line with the needs of individual countries. For example, the assistance to combat tuberculosis implemented from 1992 in the Philippines achieved success by providing technical support covering areas from building national strategy to combat tuberculosis to creating on-site models and disseminating them throughout the country as well as fostering human resources, and this is currently contributing to the national overall measures to combat tuberculosis. Furthermore, to promote development of the necessary human resources and quality control for sputum examinations, Japan established the National Tuberculosis Research Institute in March 2002 by grant aid. The Center has a scope that extends beyond the Philippines. It is also used as a base for human resource development for countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the experience of the Philippines is conveyed to other countries as South-South cooperation.

Comprehensive assistance like developing and expanding facilities and materials for effectively using such technology and human resources while at the same time providing the medication and medical examinations that had been lacking is an advantage of Japan's assistance.