The Tuberculosis Coalition for Technical Assistance (TBCTA) is a coalition of the major international organizations in TB control: American Thoracic Society (ATS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Family Health International (FHI), Japan Against TB Association (JATA), KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation (KNCV), Management Sciences for Health (MSH), The International Union Against Lung Disease and Tuberculosis (The Union) and the World Health Organization (WHO). TBCTA is implementing a USAID funded program called TB Control Assistance Program (TB CAP) in the period 1 October 2005 - 30 September 2010, with KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation as the lead partner.

Improving human and institutional capacity is one of the priority technical areas to which TB CAP is providing support. One of the important problems TBCTA partners have noted is the lack of training institutes in Africa and Asia that provide internationally recognized trainings for mid- and high-level managers and technical staff in TB control. In response, TB CAP has developed a project that aims at building TB training capacity in an existing training institute. Therefore, TB CAP published a Request for Application from training institutes to participate in this project.

TBCTA Regional Training Centre (ReTraC) Asia

Following a request of applications in May, 2007, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Gadjah Mada (FM UGM) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia has been selected as regional training centre for TB control in Asia by the TBCTA. The MOU Between KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Project Management Unit TB CAP and FM UGM concerning Project on institutional capacity building to become Regional Training School was signed in February, 2008.

The aim of this TBCTA Regional Training Centre (ReTrac) Asia is to deliver high-quality trainings in support of national, regional and global plan to stop TB 2006-2015. Thus, in the long term the populations in Asia should benefit from reduction of TB prevalence and deaths through better managed TB control programs.

The trainings that will be delivered regularly by this centre are based on the topics identified through the regional training needs assessment, i.e.

(1) TB program planning, budgeting and management;
(2) Human resources management for TB control;
(3) Public-Private Mix for TB control;
(4) Priority programmatic technical areas: TB infection control, TB-HIV and MDR-TB.

The target group for these trainings are middle level managers (managers who contribute to the formulation of programme strategy and are responsible for its implementation within a sub-national level (province/state), typically with 4 to 7 years of management experience) and upper level managers (senior executives who are responsible for, or participate in, the formulation of programme strategy and who lead strategy execution at national level, typically with more than 8 years of management experience).