By Muhammad Amaan
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has raised the alarm that drastic cuts in global health funding are threatening to reverse decades of progress in the fight against tuberculosis, the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
In a statement marking this year’s World Tuberculosis Day, WHO warned that the funding cuts are already disrupting access to TB services, including prevention, screening, and treatment, and putting millions of lives at risk.
“The huge gains the world has made against TB over the past 20 years are now at risk as cuts to funding start to disrupt access to services for prevention, screening, and treatment for people with TB,” WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
He identified funding as a major threat to global TB efforts, revealing that early reports to WHO indicate severe disruptions in the TB response across the highest-burden countries following the funding cuts.
“Twenty-seven countries are facing crippling breakdowns in their TB response, with devastating consequences, including human resource shortages undermining service delivery, diagnostic services severely disrupted, delaying detection and treatment, and data and surveillance systems collapsing, compromising disease tracking and management,” WHO said.
The organisation also disclosed that nine countries report failing TB drug procurement and supply chains, jeopardising treatment continuity and patient outcomes.
The funding cuts, according to WHO, further worsen an already existing underfunding for global TB response.
“In 2023, only 26 per cent of the $22 billion annually needed for TB prevention and care was available, leaving a massive shortfall,” the organisation said.
TB research is also in crisis, receiving just one-fifth of the $5 billion annual target in 2022, severely delaying advancements in diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines.
WHO is leading efforts to accelerate TB vaccine development through the TB Vaccine Accelerator Council, but progress remains at risk without urgent financial commitments.
In response to the urgent challenges threatening TB services worldwide, WHO’s Director-General and Civil Society Task Force on Tuberculosis have issued a decisive statement, demanding immediate, coordinated efforts from governments, global health leaders, donors, and policymakers to prevent further disruptions.
The statement outlined five critical priorities, including addressing TB service disruptions urgently, ensuring responses match the crisis’s scale, securing sustainable domestic funding, safeguarding essential TB services, and establishing or revitalising national collaboration platforms.
The Director of WHO’s Global Programme on TB and Lung Health, Dr Tereza Kasaeva, said, “This urgent call is timely and underscores the necessity of swift, decisive action to sustain global TB progress and prevent setbacks that could cost lives.”
Dr Kasaeva added, “Investing in ending TB is not only a moral imperative but also an economic necessity, every dollar spent on prevention and treatment yields an estimated $43 in economic returns.”
As one of the solutions to combating growing resource constraints, WHO is driving the integration of TB and lung health within primary healthcare as a sustainable solution.
New technical guidance released by WHO outlines critical actions across the care continuum, focusing on prevention, early detection of TB and comorbidities, optimised management at first contact, and improved patient follow-up.
The guidance also promotes better use of existing health systems, addressing shared risk factors such as overcrowding, tobacco, undernutrition, and environmental pollutants.
By tackling TB determinants alongside communicable and non-communicable diseases, lung conditions, and disabilities through a unified strategy, WHO aims to reinforce the global response and drive lasting improvements in health outcomes.
WHO calls on everyone- individuals, communities, societies, donors, and governments- to do their part to end TB.
Without concerted action from all stakeholders, the TB response will be decimated, reversing decades of progress, putting millions of lives at risk, and threatening health security.
The 2025 World TB Day was celebrated on March 24, with the theme, ‘Yes! We Can End TB: Commit, Invest, Deliver.’
The World Health Organisation described TB as a communicable disease that affects the lungs and is caused by bacteria spread through the air when infected persons cough, sneeze, spit, or laugh boisterously.
WHO noted that TB remains one of the world’s top infectious killer diseases with more than 10 million annual contractions and one million deaths.
According to the global health organisation, Nigeria has the highest burden of TB in Africa and ranks sixth among the 30 countries globally with the highest burden of the disease.
