Setting: Private practitioners including chest physicians are often an important obstacle to having a successful National Tuberculosis Programme (NTP) in low- and middle-income countries. This complicated situation has been present in most of the Latin American countries for many years. Objective: To design an intervention model to obtain collaboration and integration of specialist physicians in the actions of the NTP. Design: In 1998, the IUATLD designed a special interactive model of training courses, to be held in an important number of Latin American countries. This intensive (25h in 3 days) course was named ‘Importance of the role of chest physicians and their integration in NTP strategies’. At the end of each course, the participants were invited to sign a series of agreements concerning controversial topics that had blocked collaboration in the past. Results: This course, adapted to the situation of the different countries, has been held 17 times in 9 different countries. So far, nearly 600 specialist physicians have been trained with this special model, and all of them have signed important agreements on future collaboration. Conclusion: There has been an important improvement in integrating these specialist physicians into the actions of the NTPs. This intervention has contributed to a substantial improvement of tuberculosis control in the last 4 years in Latin America.