TB/HIV Care Association commemorated World TB Day on the 24th of March 2012 by breakfasting with  a high-level delegation from the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – the Developing Country NGO Delegation at the Upper Eastside Hotel in Woodstock, Cape Town. The aim of the breakfast, sponsored by Sanofi-Aventis, was to put TB on the map for these international delegates who are “the eyes and ears of people on the ground” according to organiser and TB/HIV Care Association Senior Advisor, Ria Grant.


Grant herself is a member of the delegation and is the reason that TB/HIV Care Association played host to twenty delegates from Bosnia, Macedonia, Belarus, Serbia, Panama, Honduras, Jamaica, Hong Kong, Nepal, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal and Zimbabwe as part of the delegation’s annual retreat, this year in Cape Town from 23 – 25 March 2012.

As part of the Global Fund, the delegation carries significant weight. The Developing Country NGO Delegation is one of the Global Fund board’s constituencies with a voting member on the board. There were also two guests from the Developed Country NGO Delegation as well as the Communities Delegation to the Global Fund present at the breakfast as well as local community representatives and service providers.

Grant says TB/HIV Care Association has specifically timed the retreat to coincide with World TB Day because the majority of civil society organisations represented on the delegation are primarily involved in HIV networks. Says Grant, “We are hoping that by having the retreat around World TB Day it will create a greater awareness of TB among the delegates.”

Prof Harry Hausler, CEO of TB/HIV Care Association, presented a lecture on Multi-Drug Resistant TB (MDR-TB) in South Africa and around the world. This evoked interesting discussion among delegates, especially from those who, because of strict government regulations, were not aware of the statistics for their own countries.

Some of the delegates freely admitted that in their own countries “we hardly ever mention TB.”