Tuberculosis control requires effective, inexpensive, simple and largely standardized technology, and the managerial skills to implement them as a large scale intervention in each country. When this strategy is implemented over a long period for the standardized treatment of smear-positive tuberculosis cases, there will be a huge reduction in sources of infection and in transmission. The issue of the treatment of those pulmonary tuberculosis patients who remain sputum smear-positive following fully supervised WHO retreatment regimen should be considered. Although these cases represent a small minority of tuberculosis patients, they constitute an on-going problem for programme managers. Due to the lack of financial resources, many countries cannot provide the range of the expensive second-line drugs which might give some hope of cure to these patients.
Many countries also lack information about the correct use of second-line drugs.