By Asmau Ahmad
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the world has fallen short of its targets to end the global Tuberculosis epidemic by 2030, saying that all hands should be on deck to achieve the ambitious targets.
Director-General of the UN health agency, Dr Ghebreyesus Tedros, said five years ago, the nations of the world committed to ending the global TB epidemic by 2030, and set ambitious targets on expanding treatment, prevention, testing, funding, research and more.
Tedros in a recorded meeting of WHO’s General Assembly on Friday, said that at the first high-level meeting on TB held half a decade ago, the world set these ambitious targets, noting that while millions of lives have been saved, the targets are yet to be achieved.
He said, “In the Sustainable Development Goals, the nations of the world, are committed to ending the global TB epidemic by 2030. To close funding gaps for TB implementation and research, we need all hands-on deck: countries, partners, civil society, affected people and communities, and donors.
“We set a target to reach 40 million people with TB with treatment, and we reached 34 million. We set a target to reach 30 million people with preventive treatment, but only reached half that many.
“We set a target to more than double funding for TB to $13 billion a year, but in fact, funding went backwards. But it’s not all bad news. Together we now have new and powerful tools that we didn’t have five years ago:
“We have rapid diagnostics to test for TB in less than two hours; and effective treatment regimens, including for drug-resistant TB; but there is one important tool we still need, and that’s a new vaccine.”
The Director General revealed that the only licensed TB vaccine was developed over a century ago and saves thousands of lives every year by protecting young children.
He, however, said the vaccine does not adequately protect adolescents and adults, who account for most TB transmission.
According to him, that was why the WHO established a TB Vaccine Acceleration Council to facilitate the development, license and equitable use of new TB vaccines.
“The political declaration we have just approved includes new ambitious targets that we must pursue with even more dedication, collaboration and innovation.
“We have committed to reach 90 per cent of people with TB prevention and care; to use the WHO-recommended rapid test as the first method of diagnosis; provide social benefit packages to all people with TB so they don’t endure financial hardship and license at least one new TB vaccine.
“For millennia, our ancestors have suffered and died with this disease, without knowing what it was, what caused it, or how to stop it. Today, we have knowledge and tools they could only have dreamed of.
“We have political commitment. And we have an opportunity that no generation in the history of humanity has had: the opportunity to write the final chapter in the story of TB,” he said.
The WHO DG noted that TB is as old as humanity itself and has afflicted kings and queens, poets and politicians, revolutionaries and writers, activists and actors, saying that no one was spared.
“TB has had many names: the white plague, the King’s evil, Scrofula, and consumption. It was only 184 years ago that the name tuberculosis was given to this disease. It was only 141 years ago that Robert Koch identified the bacterium that causes it.
“This microbe has plagued humanity for millennia and plagues us still. In 2021, TB killed more than one million people and struck millions more. In the time it takes me to make these remarks, 10 people would have died of tuberculosis somewhere in the world.
“Most are poor, marginalised or malnourished, and the out-of-pocket costs associated with treating TB expose them to financial hardship or drive them further into poverty. TB is the definitive disease of deprivation,” he added.
