Simiyu  - Tanzania marked the World TB Day in 2023, with the launch of the Multisectoral Accountability Framework to end TB (MAF TB) in Simiyu region, Northern central Tanzania. The high-level launch was graced by the Prime Minister, Kassim Majaliwa and attended by the health minister and partners involved in TB response in Tanzania.

The framework aims to enhance collaboration and accountability from all key stakeholders including policy makers towards the target of eliminating TB by 2030. The World Health Organisation (WHO) provided technical assistance throughout the process of developing the framework and supported advocacy efforts for its adoption.

Tanzania was among the 117 countries that adopted the Moscow Declaration to End TB at the first WHO Global Ministerial Conference on Ending TB in 2017 and committed to “supporting the development of a Multisectoral Accountability Framework” to accelerate progress to end TB. Further global commitments to MAF TB were provided with political declarations made at the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on TB (UN HLM on TB) in September 2018.

To pledge commitment and accountability in their respective sectors, a total of 23 Ministries signed the Multisectoral Accountability Framework to end TB (MAF TB) in Tanzania. The framework is a call to galvanize efforts to end TB beyond the health sector to end the TB epidemic in Tanzania.  Vulnerable groups such as prisoners or people in police custody, miners, healthcare workers, school pupils, refugees, or internally displaced people facing increased risk of TB will be reached with prevention and treatment services.

The overarching aim of MAF-TB is to attain a multisectoral approach to TB beyond the health sector by identifying high level political commitments, strategic interventions to achieve stated commitments and a monitoring and reporting framework to track progress related to commitments and actions. Ministerial commitments aim at achieving national targets of ending the TB epidemic in Tanzania by 2030 through multiple actions including dismantling structural barriers that foster TB stigma and discrimination. 

Following the launch, MAF-TB will be operationalized from national to sub-national levels through a coordination structure within the Prime Minister’s Office comprised of a national ministers’ forum, a national steering committee and a national technical committee.

“We need to come together in charting out strategies to fight TB. If everyone plays their part in this battle against TB, we can confidently break the chain of its new infections, including preventing unnecessary deaths, since the disease is preventable and curable,” said the Prime Minister.

TB causes 26,000 deaths in Tanzania each year and is the leading cause of deaths from single infectious disease agent worldwide. The disease of public health importance and affects the most vulnerable groups in our society including those experiencing socio-economic challenges, the elderly, and children.

To save groups at higher risk of contracting TB, Honourable Ajaliwa instructed all the Ministries mentioned in the framework to set strategic priorities to combat the TB epidemic.

The MAF-TB Tanzania builds on long established collaboration between the Ministry of Health and other sectoral ministries through the coordination of the Prime Minister Office. It will engage the civil society organizations such as the National Former TB Patient Network (MKUTA) and the Tanzania TB Community Network (TTCN), the Tanzania Stop TB Partnership which coordinates TB nonstate actors, the private sector, and the Parliamentary TB Caucus.

“I congratulate the government of Tanzania for adopting and putting in place this important structure that will enable involvement of players from different sectors to address challenges that make TB public health issue,” said WHO Tanzania Country Representative, Dr. Zabulon Yoti.

Since WHO endorsed the MAF in 2017 the Organization has been working with partners and civil society organizations to support countries to establish MAF TB structures.

MAF TB is aligned to the UN SGD 2030 goals and WHO end TB strategy.