Publicação: 7 de outubro de 2020
Before Covid-19, there was a much older, deadly respiratory killer. It is called tuberculosis. Two years ago, on 26 September 2018, I had the opportunity to attend and speak at the first ever United Nations High Level Meeting (UNHLM) on Tuberculosis. I left the meeting excited and energized. After all, TB, an ancient but neglected epidemic, finally […]
Before Covid-19, there was a much older, deadly respiratory killer. It is called tuberculosis. Two years ago, on 26 September 2018, I had the opportunity to attend and speak at the first ever United Nations High Level Meeting (UNHLM) on Tuberculosis. I left the meeting excited and energized. After all, TB, an ancient but neglected epidemic, finally got noticed in a high-profile event, where country leaders acknowledged the enormous burden of TB, and pledged their commitment to ending the epidemic by 2030. The meeting resulted in ambitious targets and a political declaration.
This week, two years after the UNHLM, the World Health Organization and partners released a progress report, to take stock of progress made in meeting the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and UNHLM targets for TB. The news is not good.
Sadly, the report shows poor progress in meeting both SDG and UNHLM targets (infographic below). In 2019, 1.4 million people died of TB, and 10 million people developed the disease. While the target for TB preventive therapy is 30 million by 2022, only 6.3 million people have been treated during 2018 and 2019. While the target for funding TB care and prevention is $13 billion annually, only $6.5 billion were raised during 2020. By 2020, nobody should have faced catastrophic costs due to TB, but one in two people with TB still face such economic challenges
