By Clifford Akumu
Nairobi, Kenya: Global tuberculosis experts are calling for an increase in available funding to tackle the infectious and deadly airborne disease that claims a total of 1.5 million lives annualy.
Experts said the world is failing the TB response and this is likely to apply brakes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target for ending the epidemic by 2030.
The Global TB funding is well below needs, said Lucica Ditui, executive director of the Geneva-based STOP TB Partnership during an online media briefing ahead of World Tuberculosis Day, commemorated on 24th March.
“Investments in TB are pathetically low. This gives us very little chance of meeting the UN 2030 targets,” she said.
Stop TB estimates that $19.6 billion per year will be needed over the next eight years for TB prevention and care, and $4 billion per year will be required for research and development (R&D) of the new diagnostics, medicines, and vaccines needed to end TB.
This represents about four times what is currently available for the TB response. In 2020, $5.3 billion was available for care and prevention and $0.9 billion for R&D.
The year 2022 is critical for the global fight to end TB as the world faces a fast-running countdown to reaching the 2018 United Nations High-Level Meeting (UNHLM) TB targets, which the international community agreed to meet by the end of December. All projections show that the world is not on course to meet the UNHLM treatment targets set for 2022.
“We simply cannot continue to stand on the sidelines and watch while people around the world fall ill and die from a preventable and treatable disease,” said Ditiu.
Adding “We also cannot continue to accept what we accepted for years—every year having less than 40% of the funding need for the TB response. Now we are facing a disastrous funding shortfall, bigger than what we had expected. We not only need to step up efforts to meet targets set at the 2018 United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB,” she said.
Ditiu added that the TB response must also recover from the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additional funding will enable TB programs around the world, “To treat 50 million people with TB, including 3.7 million children and 2.2 million people with drug-resistant TB. It will also enable faster R&D, including new and effective vaccines, which are essential if we want to end TB by 2030,” she added.
TB in times of conflict
The experts further bemoaned the destruction of Ukraine’s innovative TB program which had made an impact in addressing the country’s high burden of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) over the past 15 years.
Ms. Yana Terleeva, Head of Department of TB Programme Coordination, Center for Public Health of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine lamented the destruction of hospitals and clinics, including the shelling of three huge dispensaries where the country had stockpiled sufficient TB medications for the remainder of 2022.
Terleeva added that according to health ministry information, more than 135 hospitals in Ukraine have been shelled by the Russian aggressors. World Health Organisation has confirmed about 60 attacks on hospitals and other health facilities.
She noted that she had been planning to implement an innovative new TB treatment regimen to tackle the country’s drug-resistant TB burden-which had been hailed by officials as a model.
“Ukraine was always on the forefront of the fight against TB. We chose the European way of working when it comes to diagnostic and care. We wanted Ukraine to be free from TB. We have done everything possible. We thought in March that we’d be implementing innovative TB treatment regimens,” Ms. Terleeva told journalists from an undisclosed location inside her car in War-torn Ukraine.
“Now instead, we are trying to differentiate between aerial shelling, raids, and other military hardware. We are on the 26th day of the war and Ukraine has to fight on the one side illnesses like TB, and on the other side the Russian invasion.”
Support
While condemning the ongoing war, Romania’s Health Minister, Professor Alexandru Rafila said his country was doing everything it could to assist the refugees that had fled across the 600km border with his country, including identifying and ensuring treatment for TB patients.
“We have a network of TB hospitals and TB care centers where we can perform rapid diagnosis and treat Ukrainian patients if they are resistant or need to initiate treatment”, said Rafila terming the war “stupid war”.
Ditiu called on the need to focus on how to treat internally displaced people, how to ensure people fleeing war-torn Ukraine can continue their medication, and how to combat the stigma that refugees elsewhere may encounter.
“We’ve worked hard to overcome the stigma and discrimination that comes with TB. We urge neighboring countries not to stigmatize Ukrainian refugees,” added Terleeva.
“We urgently need to provide the support needed to ensure continuity of treatment for people affected by TB, as well as to equip neighboring countries with the tools they need for timely diagnosis and treatment of refugees,” said Dr. Nino Berdzuli, Director of the Division of Country Health Programs, WHO.
Ukraine is one of the top 30 high drug-resistant TB burden countries in the world, with 1 in 3 people having a form of TB that does not respond to the most potent TB drugs. In 2021, Ukraine diagnosed and treated 24,000 people with TB, including almost 5,000 people with multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB).
“The ongoing war is completely unacceptable. We all make tremendous efforts to have a better, healthier world, and we celebrate every single person with TB treated with success and cured. And we see now lives being lost in hundreds in a blink. This must stop,” said Dr. Ditiu.
The Stop TB Partnership is continuously monitoring and assessing the situation in Ukraine and is coordinating efforts with partners to provide seamless supplies of additional TB drugs to Ukraine if this need arises.
