Little history of RIDES-Tuberculosis in the Framework of the Strategic Plan 2009-2012 for cooperation in health of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries

Abstract

Tuberculosis remains a major public health problem world-wide. In 2016, the WHO launched an appeal to governments, communities, civil society and the private sector to be "United to End Tuberculosis", promoting the dialogue and collaboration that unites people and communities to implement new ways to end the epidemic of tuberculosis (TB) and in particular of drug-resistant TB that continues to increase in some regions of the world. A similar appeal was launched by President Jorge Sampaio, within the VII Conferência de Chefes de Estado e de Governo da Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP) (Lisbon, July 25, 2008) entitled "Call to Action", challenging the CPLP countries to make every effort to promote the debate by civil society on issues of health in the portuguese speaking countries, particularly in issues related to HIV / AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. This appeal led to the creation of Health Research and Development Network on Tuberculosis - RIDES-TB among the different countries of the CPLP that were welcomed in the Strategic Plan for Cooperation in Health 2009-2012 (PECS / CPLP). This paper describes the genesis, the first steps and multilateral consolidation of RIDES-TB from 2008 to 2015, demonstrating how numerous efforts of the national TB control programs, the reference laboratories, academy and research institutes in different lusophone countries responded to this appeal with great success. These joint efforts accelerated the progress towards the overall achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and today RIDES-TB has a clear framework in the future of the CPLP strategy for health, the Agenda 2030 and the END TB program implementation to the portuguese speaking world.