The ICN, IFRC, IHF and WMA hosted a MDR-TB healthcare worker safety workshop in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2007.

South African MDR-TB community workers, hospital managers, nurses and physicians participated in the safety course hosted by Lilly partners the ICN, IFRC IHF, and WMA in November 2007.

Attention to infection control and health care worker safety vis-à-vis drug resistant TB was the theme of a joint workshop held by Lilly partners: the International Council of Nurses (ICN), the International Hospital Federation (IHF), the World Medical Association (WMA), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and the South African Red Cross Society in Cape Town, South Africa. The two day workshop, November 12 and 13, 2007, brought together South African MDR-TB community support workers, hospital managers, nurses and physicians to jointly examine and address safety issues.

Given the already critical shortage of health providers and generally weak health systems in the regions most affected by MDR- and XDR-TB, particularly southern Africa, anxiety about safety in the health care environment runs high and can dissuade health providers to accept assignments in these settings. The workshop program therefore addressed administrative, environmental and personal respiratory protection with the goal of identifying good practices, implementing joint recommendations for facilities and health workers and establishing a working group to communicate the identified practices and recommendations.

The first day of the workshop focused on the current status of drug resistant TB in South Africa. Pam Richards of the South African National TB Program (NTP) preceded a keynote on challenges and realities in MDR- and XDR-TB infection control and protection of health care workers by Dr.  Paul Jensen of the U.S. Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  This plenary session was followed by group work where the four teams discussed current work place safety and the hierarchies of infection control.

Dr. Charles Daley of the National Jewish Medical Center opened the second day with a presentation on the ethical duty of health care workers and their employers to create a safe MDR- and XDR-TB treatment workplace. A panel of representatives from ICN, IFRC, IHF and WMA, together with WHO's Dr. Matteo Zignol and Dr. Michel Selgelid of the Australian National University Canberra, Centre for applied philosophy and public ethics (CAPPE) discussed ethical issues surrounding workplace safety.

The workshop concluded with a summary discussion involving all participants, facilitators and presenters on key messages captured by D'Arcy Richardson of PATH. The workshop emphasized that the way forward in healthcare worker safety in settings treating MDR- and XDR-TB must be a multidisciplinary approach. This workshop provided a platform to foster multi-professional teamwork to enable development and implementation of better infection control mechanisms.