World Health Organization : Tuberculosis Hardly Under Control

Tuberculosis disease was listed as one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide, ranking higher than HIV and Malaria.

In the 2014 World Health Assembly, world leaders agreed to the 2030 ‘twin goals’. These goals are to decrease the number of deaths due to the respiratory infection by 90% . Furthermore, they aim to bring down the cases reported, by 80%, compared to the number reported last 2015.

But, according to the World Health Organization Tuberculosis report released last Thursday, deaths and cases increased between 2013 and 2015. The case hike reflects a very serious problem in the fight against tuberculosis. The record shows that the number of escalated cases worldwide are far behind the total number of TB cases.

In about 10.4 million new cases in 2015, only 6.1 million were identified and reported to the authorities.

It clearly shows that the world governments are failing to meet their 2030 “twin goals”.
Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general, said “There must be a massive scale-up of efforts, or countries will continue to run behind this deadly epidemic and these ambitious goals will be missed,” she further said, “We face an uphill battle to reach the global targets for tuberculosis.”

Seconded by Greg Elder, a medical coordinator for Doctors without Borders, called the report a “shockingly bad report card.”

In a statement, he said, “Governments need to get their heads out of the sand and realize that TB is not a disease consigned to the 1800s, we see and treat TB in our clinics every day, and it’s a deadly threat to all of us.”

Meanwhile, Mario Raviglione, the director of the WHO Global TB Program shared his sentiment about the issue.He called the global TB response in the last year “dismal”. Raviglione also added that program needs more money for rapid tests and drugs.

Most of the serious cases of tuberculosis come from low and middle-class countries. The report notes that they need $8.3 billion funds in 2016 but only received more or less $2 billion. Most of the funds came from domestic funding sources in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The report says, if the fund issue for TB treatment and prevention will not be addressed, the gap will increase to $6 billion by 2020.

U.S. top donor

According to Kaiser Family Foundation, who tracks health aid funding, most of the global aid support for TB comes through international donations. These are funneled to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The US is the single largest donor to the fund. Over the next three years, the U.S. has pledged $4.3 billion to be spent fighting AIDS, TB, and malaria.

However, tuberculosis-specific funding for programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development has declined since 2012, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s analysis of federal appropriations. If it is approved, the budget request for 2017 will be the lowest level of funding for USAID TB programs since 2009.

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