Webinar: Community, rights, and gender—Meaningful engagement with African-centred masculinities to end TB

Join the LIGHT Consortium, SSHIFTB, and the Union Working Group on Gender Equity in TB for a webinar to meaningfully engage with African-centred perspectives on masculinities for person-centred community, rights, and gender TB response.

The global TB community is united in their call for equitable, gender-responsive, rights-based, and stigma-free TB prevention and care, exemplified during the preparations for the UN High Level Meeting on tuberculosis (TB). The demands to centre community, rights, and gender in the TB response are, however, not new. Building on the sustainable development agenda’s shared promise to leave no-one behind, the 2018 Political Declaration included numerous commitments – from community involvement in the TB response, special attention to people considered most vulnerable, to actions that end TB stigma, address discrimination, and overcome barriers to TB services among others. We hope that these commitments remain in the 2023 Political Declaration.

In 2021, close to 2.5 million people developed TB disease across the WHO African region (WHO Global TB Report 2022). Despite the region having achieved a significant reduction in TB incidence (22% since 2015), a first milestone of the WHO’s End TB Strategy, men are faced with systemic barriers to accessing TB prevention and care. Of 1.3 million men who developed TB disease in the region in 2021, nearly 550,000 (42%) remained undiagnosed and missed out on care (WHO Global TB Report 2022). TB-affected communities have a critical role in ending TB due to their lived experience. Theoretical and methodological frameworks need to reflect the complex realities, diversity, and capacities of TB-affected communities and be equipped to empower them as leaders and partners in the local and global TB response.

This community, rights and gender webinar will bring TB advocates, academics, and practitioners together to:

• Contribute towards advancing understandings and visibility of African-centred masculinity theories, and their application to TB research, policy, and practice.

• Learn from research and advocacy that centre the lived experiences of African men with TB.

• Explore ways for an equitable, gender-responsive, rights-based, and stigma-free TB response with men in African contexts.

LIGHT is a six-year cross-disciplinary global health research programme funded by UK aid, led by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine working with partners in Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, and the UK. SSHIFTB is a virtual centre focused on social science research and innovation to study and address the global TB epidemic. The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (Union) Working Group on Gender Equity in TB was created to mobilise knowledge on the role of gender in TB burden, prevention, and care for awareness and action through evidence-informed policy and practice.