Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by the Secretary of State for International Development on 5 March (HC Deb, col 879), what is the timeframe for integrating collaborative tuberculosis and HIV activities into all Department for International Development HIV programmes.

Last year’s review of our 2011 HIV Position Paper highlighted integrated responses to tackling HIV and tuberculosis co-infection as a key area of current and on-going work.

DFID health advisers are aware of the package of collaborative TB and HIV activities recommended by WHO and are able to discuss these with the TB and HIV control programmes in the countries we support. However due to our current financial and management information systems we are unable to report on the specific interventions requested without incurring disproportionate cost.

Increasingly the Global Fund is the main financing mechanism for the UK’s support to TB and HIV. DFID has been strongly involved in the recent Global Fund requirement for countries burdened by the two diseases to put forward a unified and integrated application for joint TB-HIV programmes.