Jan. 28, 2021
Europe
Engaging and empowering people and communities, Strengthening governance and accountability, Reorienting the model of care, Coordinating services within and across sectors, Creating an enabling environment
Policy framework for building integrated care for TB patients in Romania: setting up the scene
Romania put many efforts for TB control, but despite a constant decreasing trend since almost two decades, TB remained a public health concern, due to the notification rate (highest in EU), the number of resistant cases and the mortality. A national strategy for TB control has been issues for 2015-2020, but its implementation was fragmentary. Benefiting for a series of programs financed by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Romania performed a detailed analysis of the national context, on four pillars (governance and accountability, service delivery, organizational capacity, resources). Quantitative data collected through routine systems were combined to interviews with key informers and focus groups with medical staff, patients and NGOs active in supporting key vulnerable population. A national framework for strengthening the implementation of the strategy was set up under a Tailored to Transition Global Fund Grant. This framework put together the policy and the technical levels and the civil society sector. Main interventions aimed to strengthen the governance, to improve the procurement and supply mechanism, to develop the ambulatory patient-centered model of care and to create tools for improving the access of key vulnerable population to basic integrated medical and social services. Translating the good practice models developed by the NGO sector to permanent (governmental) structures was difficult due to more rigorous legislative framework for public systems.
Link or file