By Hassan Zaggi
A Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), KNCV has organized a 2 day brainstorming session with stakeholders on the KNCV Tuberculosis (TB) Foundation Nigeria Local Organisation Network (LON) Grant Application.
This is in an effort to generate local community based solutions to curbing Tuberculosis (TB) in Nigeria,
The meeting which attracted TB stakeholders and partners from different parts of the country was held in Abuja, recently.
It would be recalled that KNCV TB Foundation Nigeria has been shortlisted among other partner organisations for possible consideration for the LON grant.
Responding to questions from ExpressDay, a private consultant to KNCV, Dr. Nkem Chukwueme, explained that the purpose of the two day brainstorming session was to strengthen the partnership coordination mechanism for TB control.
“Over all, what we are doing is a brainstorming session to derive some locally generated solutions to curb the debilitating disease TB,” she further explained.
She noted that the national programme in its efforts to control TB has done a lot so far and this has been done through the support of many partners including Global Fund, USAID.
“For now, USAID has proposed that they will continue the funding for TB and they have been doing that for quite a while.
“For the past 20 years, USAID has been supporting TB control in Nigeria and they have been utilizing KNCV as the principal recipient for most of its cooperative agreements which some people may call it grants.”
Dr Nkem further explained that: “Basically, of recent, they have decided that they want to roll out a new cycle, but then there is a different approach.
“A different approach in the sense that they will want local organizing networks to come up with those propose solutions. We had a meeting with USAID in which they have provided us a guidance on what their direction is, the programme description of what they expect and we have followed in line with what they have proposed.
“I think, KNCV is one of the, if not the only organization that have decided that even though whether we get the award or not, it is best for us to generate the solutions locally from the community level.
“That is why these two days we have decided to bring persons that have been affected by TB, the media, stop TB partnership, local community based organisations at the community level, faith based orgnaisations and other implementing partners that actually have large expanse of work that they are doing to rub minds and come up with workable solutions to ending TB in Nigeria.”
