IATB’s 4th council enlargement meeting was held successfully on 2nd February in Beijing. Delegation from 52 member hospitals and IATB itself attended the meeting. The occasion had listened to IATB’s Working Priority Plan for 2018 and current operation status, deliberated on resolutions on IATB’s organization structure, laid a foundation for IATB operation in the coming year.

The meeting was hosted by IATB’s standing deputy director, Mr. Li Liang. Mr. Du Jian, IATB’s secretary delivered the Priority Working Plan for 2018. Mr. Du stated that IATB will continue to improve its operating mechanism, keep elevating its professional capability and service capacity. The organization will lay a special emphasis on promoting the exchanges and interactions among its membership hospitals, fully integrating their respective resources and continually constructing the TB standardized database, so as to facilitate the informatization process of TB prevention and treatment. In the coming year, TB-related clinical research works, the training and education works, will continually occupy a large amount of attention of IATB, trying to make them more elite and exclusive, and cultivating growing numbers of qualified clinical researchers to the field. In addition, IATB will continue to support the following areas of works, namely TB prevention and treatment efforts in central and western regions of China, participation of international cooperation, promoting technology-application conversion by setting up a translation platform, strengthening field-industry interactions by encouraging relevant enterprises to participate in philanthropic works so as to elevate the social prominence of anti-TB efforts in China.

This meeting had passed by deliberation the setting up of IATB Standing Committee, and elected the following hospitals, enterprises and individuals to fill the committee, they are Capital Medical University’s Beijing Chest Hospital, Tianjin Haihe Hospital, Shanxi Province Institute of Tuberculosis Prevention and Treatment, Tongji University’s Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Chest Hospital, Shenyang Chest Hospital, Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital, Shenzhen Chronic Diseases Prevention and Treatment Center, Suzhou No.5 People’s Hospital, Chengdu Public Health Clinical Treatment Center, Jilin Province Tuberculosis Hospital, Shandong Province Chest Hospital, Hebei Province Chest Hospital, Taiyuan No.4 People’s Hospital, Shanghai Fosun Pharma Diagnostics, Beijing Xiehe Pharmaceuticals and Mr. Li Liang. The meeting had also decided on setting up the IATB secretariat, the appointment of Mrs. Liu Yuhong, the director of IATB’s tuberculosis clinical center, and Mr. Zhang Yao, the deputy secretary of IATB. The occasion also saw the adjustment of IATB’s working committee, the passing of the ‘Regulations on Management of IATB’s Subsidiaries (on trial)’ as well as the amending of CTCTC’s chart. In the meantime, the meeting bore witness to the induction of the very first applicants into IATB membership, and decided  on the proposal to adjust fees for individual membership, of which according to IATB regulations, will be submitted to the general assembly for further deliberation.

The meeting also saw Mrs. Liu Yuhong delivering the CTCTC 2018 Working Priority Report, while Mr. Pang Yu, delivered a report on quality control works of IATB’s laboratory. Introduction of the TB-specialized hospital big database construction was then presented by Prof. Tang Shenjie. Followed by Mr. Du Jian introducing the working progress on the construction of a radiological database as well as the clinical data standardization project. Mr. Du finally announced the name list of whom will be supported by the very first ‘Eyas Project’, along with its selection and assessment criteria.

Upon conclusion, Mr. Xu Shaofa, director of IATB, made a summing-up speech. Mr. Xu pointed out that IATB, after one year’s development, is in a transition period from ‘being supported at its infancy’ to a time when it can‘Stand by its own feet’. He stated that sticking to the concept of ‘Thinking afar, operating steady, achieving large’, the alliance must accurately identify its operating priorities. IATB will gradually expand its influence by accomplishing each and every task at hand with a meticulous focus on details.  Mr. Xu explained that ‘a meticulous focus on details’ means that each and every task entrusted to or undertaken by IATB must see its result, have feedback and be conclusively evaluated. He stressed that while completing all the tasks, IATB will continue to promote the ties among its membership hospitals, and timely adjust its working direction, so as to allocate limited resources on the most valuable and promising works. Mr.Xu believed that it is vital for IATB to become an entity with irreplaceable traits, and the key lays in the systematic construction of its training and education works, the big database project as well as the incorporation of TB-specific lab quality control works into national system.