Ban urges countries to step up efforts to stop tuberculosis

(March 23, 2012) The United Nations chief urged countries on Thursday to step up their efforts to prevent tuberculosis (TB), including by increasing access to treatments and improving the quality of their health services to be able to “stop TB in our lifetime.” TB remains a leading cause of death from infectious diseases worldwide, second only to HIV/AIDS. Last year alone, 8.4 million people contracted TB and 1.4 million died from the disease. “For too long, the response has been insufficient,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said in his remarks at the Institute of Respiratory Medicine in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, adding that countries have the means to prevent unnecessary deaths, but need to implement policies that not only raise awareness about the issue but provide accessible healthcare to their citizens. Speaking ahead of World Tuberculosis Day on Saturday, Ban called for “intensified global solidarity to ensure that the children and people of all the countries get medical support, so that they can breathe with health.”
In a related development, three non-governmental organizations (NGO) said on Friday that a $1.7 billion funding shortfall to fight tuberculosis (TB) over the next five years means 3.4 million patients will go untreated and gains made against the disease will be reversed. The Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, which has helped prevent 4.1 million deaths from TB, no longer has the resources to expand its work against the infectious disease, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the Stop AIDS Campaign and anti-poverty group Results UK said in a joint statement. The three NGOs who issued their statement ahead of World TB Day on Saturday, called on governments to scale up funding of TB, HIV and malaria programmes at a G20 meeting in Mexico in June in an effort to replenish the Global Fund with $2 billion. TB is a worldwide pandemic that kills around 1.5 million people a year and is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The infection destroys patients' lung tissue, causing them to cough up the bacteria, which then spread through the air and can be inhaled by others. In 2010, 8.8 million people had TB, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The public-private Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is the world's largest financial backer of the fight against the three infectious diseases.