Toolkit for Developing a National TB Research Plan

Tuberculosis (TB) remains an important global health problem. Although a number of important advances have been made to control TB in the past decade, an estimated 10.4 million people fell ill with TB and 1.8 million died from the disease in 2015. WHO’s Global TB Programme has identified research and innovation as one of the three essential pillars to end TB as a public health threat by 2030. This document provides the structure and tools that enable the necessary actions to be taken to address country-specific TB challenges and ensure that national response activities are supported by evidence to the fullest extent possible.

This document describes how to develop a country-specific approach to utilizing research and innovation to strengthen and improve TB care and control. It provides a series of tools for developing and implementing a national TB research plan that will help in leveraging individual country action to address the global TB burden. These tools will assist a country’s national TB control programme or its equivalent to develop an effective national TB research plan through a coherent step-by-step process.