Experiences in Africa determined him to #endTB
Sharing moments that make him proud when he looks back, Dr Raviglione said: "After coming back from Swaziland the decision to switch to infectious diseases like HIV and TB while I was still doing internal medicine and hoping to pursue cardiology, makes me proud. What I saw in Africa changed my career prospective. Diseases of the poor motivated me."
More than twenty years ago he realized how critically lacking were standards in global TB care and control and so contributed to the development of DOTS strategy in 1994. "DOTS strategy was a simple and elementary package, providing a system to have diagnosis in right way, treatment in right place and monitor progress," said Dr Raviglione.
When DOTS was launched in 1995 there was no reliable data on drug resistance. So he shouldered the responsibility of setting up a drug-resistance-surveillance system in 1994. He also shares credit for setting up the global TB surveillance and monitoring system in 1995.
Two decades later, these contributions of Dr Raviglione undoubtedly proved to be game-changers and continue to guide the efforts to #endTB even today. "It was important to ensure the balance between simplicity of the system and importance of data being collected," he said.
Engaging private sector (non-state actor) is a shared challenge for almost every disease-control programme. It becomes more acute in countries where private sector is significantly big. "Engaging non-state private sector is crucial, especially in highest TB-burden countries, like India or Indonesia, where private sector is rampant. We embarked on that and Dr Mukund Uplekar did a great job in pursuing that line. We have not yet solved it but we understand it much better now," said Dr Raviglione.
"Another milestone was when we facilitated civil society engagement in the year 2000," he said. Engaging affected communities is so very central to improving public health outcomes.
"The development of WHO End TB Strategy with very ambitious targets is an important milestone. Although some people say that it is too ambitious and it will never be reached, but we have the technology and the political will in some places to do it. We have to accelerate progress on all fronts to reach a good part of these goals by 2030," rightly emphasized Dr Raviglione.
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