TBAC develops governance manual for communities affected by TB

For the advocates at the TB Accountability Consortium one of their most important goals is to empower ordinary people to understand how TB care should be rolled out in their communities.

This means knowing how much money has been allocated to the TB programmes at their clinics and how the programme must be rolled out. A key part of this understanding that each clinic facility in South Africa has a clinic committee that is responsible for its management.

These community leaders need to be able to hold the clinic committees to account. By asking the necessary questions, they are able to hold government to account at a grassroots level.

As part of this accountability empowerment programme TBAC has been working with community leaders in the districts that have the highest burdens of TB in the country, empowering them to engage with these committees.

The workshops have been centred on a governance manual developed in collaboration with TBAC’s implementation partner TAC.

Zimbini Madikiza said: “The rationale is to equip communities with the knowledge so that they can navigate and develop accountability structures in the areas where they live. This will help them to be constituents who have confidence to demand accountability for change in their communities.”

The manual has been rolled out in a pilot in the North West and the first community engagements took place in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.