Dear everyone -

At the meeting Saturday with Marcos Espinal and colleagues from the STB Partnership, community participants from the TB/HIV community workshop and members of TBTV.org successfully asked for the Partnership to begin a process to identify community representatives who could serve:

• On the STB Partnership Coordinating Board (one seat currently exists, unfilled)
• On the Core Groups of the seven Partnership Working Groups:
  • DOTS Expansion
  • TB/HIV
  • DOTS-Plus (MDR-TB)
  • New Diagnostics
  • New Drugs
  • New Vaccines
  • Advocacy & Communications
• On the seven Working Groups themselves

The community participants asked me to serve as the focal point for the community discussion and way forward. Petra Heitkamp from the Partnership just sent the following materials relevant to the process, summarized below.

I would like organizations and networks from each region to nominate people to serve on a group to work on developing terms of reference, a nominating process, and a selection process to fill these affected communities/people living with the diseases seats at the Partnership's various policymaking bodies. After this group copmrised of appropriately-selected regional representatives develops the TORs, nominating and selection processes we can then move forward to implement this and send the resulting names to Stop TB. We would also need to discsuss structures for accountability and communication between the representatives and the communities and networks around the world.

The next meeting of the STB Coordinating Board is in April 2005 but it would be good to have an individual (or a member and an alternate) in place by February so that they could visit Geneva and become oriented.

Also individuals who are interested in participating in the working groups should know that this participation is said to be open to all and that you can enroll simply writing to the Partnership secretariat coordinator, Petra Heitkamp, at heitkampp@who.int.

Please circulate this announcement widely to any potentially interested individuals, organizations and networks working with people living with/affected by HIV and/or TB.

Cheers,

- Mark

Dear Mark,

As discussed in Paris, please find attached the various information on the Stop TB Coordinating Board. More information is online: http://www.stoptb.org/coordinating_board/. Attached I have compiled for you the following documents:

1. Basic Stop TB Framework outlining the various functions and processes of the main Partnership bodies
2. Manual CB-section: detailed explanation of the procedures related to the Board
3. Sample of NGO selection announcement and Terms of reference (also available for Foundation seat or Corporate seat)
4. Board members and the staggering membership

The reports of the recent Board meetings are online, and the website will be updated with all the previous Board meeting reports. If you need any further specific details on the Board in this stage, please contact me or Marcos.

TB Patient groups
As discussed it is of major importance that the various TB patient initiatives are further encouraged to be strengthening their efforts. I've listed below some of the Stop TB Partner organizations that I could think of who are closely working with TB patients and communities and who have indicated an interest in being representing the communities affected by TB.

TB.TV (Case Gordon), LHL (Ted Torfoss), ISDEN (Yvan Horna and Sister Maria), Results International (Joanne Carter), Ram Khadka (Nepal), BRAC (Bangaldesh), HDNet (Tim France)

Joining the Partnership
The Stop TB Partnership has about 300 Partners. Partners can have their profile for public display on the new Stop TB directory. Please join the Partnership by listing your organization on http://www.stoptb.org/partners/partner_application.asp. If your organization is a partner and is not listed below, please update your Partner profile or contact info@stoptb.org. For further information and more specific briefing material on how to join the Partnership, please contact Ms Valerie Diaz, Email: diazv@who.int

Mailinglist
You can receive regular information on Stop TB through subscribing to our mailinglist:
Email: news-subscribe@stoptb.org
Please don't hesistate to contact Robert Hernandez (Email: hernandezr@who.int) for any issues, ideas or suggestions related to the Website and the mailinglist.

We look forward to hear from you how we can better communicate and share information with the HIV communities.

I hope this information is useful, and let us know what else you would need.

Best wishes,

Attachments - zipped file of Word docs:
• Draft Manual of Procedures for the Stop TB Partnership
• Announcement: NGO candidates for the Stop TB Coordinating Board
• Draft Document: NGO participation in the Coordinating Board of the Global Partnership to Stop TB
• Stop TB Coordinating Board—Terms of Office and staggering members
• Basic Framework for the Global Partnership to Stop TB

Note: html and pdf versions of this set of attachments will be available from this page in the next few days.