Conclusions & Recommendations

As of January 2021, only 5 districts meet the criteria indicating that they have “skipped” MDA due to COVID-19; therefore, there is little need yet for broad scale mitigation due to COVID-19.

During the rich discussion about “persistence”, there was general consensus that there is a need to do something different in “persistent areas” while conducting enhanced monitoring and evaluation to gather data to demonstrate whether these strategies are effective and generalizable to other areas. TEC agreed, however, that a consensus of an operational definition of "persistence" needs to be reached. TEC will discuss what this means for eliciting and approving requests for Zithromax®.

Reducing the frequency of trachoma impact surveys while maintaining the current program schedule (annual one-round MDA) will not successfully address the persistence issue, nor will it improve our understanding of what is happening in these districts or decrease overall program costs. TEC recommends that the frequency of TIS and TSS remain unchanged.

It is imperative that national programs are involved in the discussions to consider and design more-frequent-than-annual MDA.

As a whole, as the global trachoma program matures, more context-specific interventions will be needed.

TEC acknowledges with appreciation the hard work of the ITI team to prepare an organized and well-executed first virtual TEC meeting.

Highlight in country applications areas that are suspected endemic

Highlight districts with no partner and no funding source (either in maps, narrative, or applications)

TEC recommends to ITI that the districts in Tahoua and Maradi that are part of the AVENIR trial be noted in future Zithromax® Applications. TEC further recommends strong coordination between the study team, ITI, and the PNSO.

TEC expressed gratitude at the cooperation shown by the PNSO in the program assessment recommended at TEC 20. The results indicate that the country has taken large steps towards their elimination goals. TEC recommends that the assessment findings be shared with the PNSO and PNSO stakeholders that participated in this process.