WHO South-East Asia countries commit to intensified efforts, concrete progress to End TB

Kolkata: Tracking progress to eliminate tuberculosis, Member countries of WHO South-East Asia Region has committed to further intensifying efforts to ensure rapid and concrete progress to End TB by 2030.In a statement adopted at the Delhi End TB Summit, member countries unanimously agreed to actualizing and intensifying essential actions agreed to in the Delhi Call to Action which was adopted in March last year to accelerate efforts to End TB in the Region, host to one fourth of the global population but a disproportionate 46 per cent of the global TB burden.

“Progress against TB in this Region will have a major impact on the progress globally,” Director-General, World Health Organization Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.“Too much is at stake, we cannot afford to fail. We must remember that the war against TB will be won in communities. It will be won by nurses, doctors, community health workers and others at the frontlines. We must give them the resources they need to find every last person with TB, to diagnose them, to treat them, and to cure them,” he said.

Welcoming the statement, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director for WHO South-East Asia, said, “it gives shape to our momentum and aspirations, and does so by setting out a series of strategic priorities which include establishing strong leadership of TB programmes at the national level; increasing budgetary and human resource allocations to TB programmes from domestic and global sources; enabling each and every TB patient to access the best possible care available; and supplementing medical care for TB with social and financial protection.”

Reviewing efforts being made to end TB since the adoption of the Delhi Call for Action on 16 March 2017, Member countries noted that though efforts have been strengthened with increased attention, investments and initiatives; the stepped-up response was falling short of what was required to reach the critical thresholds for ending TB.The Member countries of the Region stressed their firm intent to collectively reach out to 2 million missing TB cases and 150 000 multidrug-resistance cases by 2020 and implement a response that is demonstrably adequate for ending TB.In the statement, the countries committed to multisectoral and empowered national initiatives, reporting to the highest levels of government, to lead the TB programme.(UNI)