In organizing care Health Departments should in reciprocate manner enlist the advice and cooperation of the medical schools and the representatives of the professionals involved in health care. Health workers in the public sector could well learn from the private sector aspects of practice which could improve the public sector service. It is crucial that, as a profession, doctors should be seen to be striving to keep up to date and to be well informed. Medical schools and medical professional associations may, in conjunction with well-funded schools and associations in the developed countries invite experts in tuberculosis to lecture in the medical schools. International health organizations such as WHO should prime this process with some funding.
Pharmaceutical companies can also provide support to continuing education.
Local communities are likely to support continuing education for their doctors and may even play a part in raising funds for this process, through NGOs, national institutions, other organizations or groups. It will be some time before doctors in developing countries with high prevalence of tuberculosis have to face up to being assessed at regular intervals for fitness to practise in the same way as have doctors in the United States and some other developed countries. But when that time approaches the medical schools and the medical professional associations should be prepared and ready to take on this task on behalf of the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Education, who themselves will be responsible to the community for ensuring the continued competence of the medical practitioners serving the community. Programme have been discussed but other facets of partnership are bound to emerge as the medical schools and the medical profession respond to the challenge posed by tuberculosis to so many of the citizens of today and of tomorrow.