Time to act on the 2018 TB commitments

Nearly one year after the first United Nations High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis, the Stop TB Partnership, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the World Health Organization call for immediate action to implement the commitments made by heads of state and governments.

Targets that were agreed in the October 2018 Political Declaration of the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Fight Against Tuberculosis for 2018-2022 are:

• to provide appropriate diagnosis and treatment to 40 million people with TB, including 3.5 million children and 1.5 million people with drug-resistant TB;
• to reach at least 30 million people with preventive treatment, including 4 million children under the age of 5; 6 million people living with HIV and 20 million other household contacts of people affected by TB;
• to mobilize US$13 billion annually needed by 2022 for implementation; and
• to mobilize US$2 billion annually for TB research and innovation.

These ambitious and time-bound targets will only be achieved if all political leaders, particularly in the countries with the highest burden of TB, take urgent action to ensure each country can achieve its national share of the global targets for the treatment of TB and preventive treatment, and countries work together to mobilize the necessary resources. The Stop TB Partnership, the Global Fund and the World Health Organization are committed to working with all partners to support countries in their work in planning and implementing these actions.

TB is now the world’s leading infectious killer, surpassing HIV. In 2017, TB killed 1.6 million people, including 300,000 HIV-positive people.

“It is critical to put the foot on the pedal, to save millions from illness, suffering and death,” said Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, Director of the WHO Global TB Programme. “This is why WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently sent letters to heads of state of the highest-burden countries highlighting the need for strong and visionary leadership now more than ever.”

The Stop TB Partnership, in collaboration with Avenir Health, has produced a breakdown of what the global 40 million and 30 million treatment targets mean for each country, using the latest estimates of TB disease burden and data on case notifications published by WHO. This country-by-country breakdown provides indicative targets and benchmarks that could be used to inform country dialogue, further refinement and development of national and sub-national targets, linked to the development and updating of national strategic plans for TB and associated funding requests, including to the Global Fund.

Several high-burden countries have already started to use these indicative targets to plan their actions toward ending TB, and others must do so as well if we are to collectively achieve the targets of the High-Level Meeting.

In 2020, the UN Secretary-General will provide, with support from the WHO Director-General, a progress report on global and national progress toward achieving the commitments made in the 2018 Political Declaration of the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Fight Against TB, which will serve to inform preparations for a comprehensive review by heads of state and government at a follow-up High-Level Meeting on TB in 2023.

Original source: The Global Fund
Published on 06 August 2019