HQ Team
September 23, 2023: The WHO’s rapid test will be used as the first method to diagnose tuberculosis and the global health agency will license one TB vaccine in a bid to reach 90% of the patients and to end the epidemic.
The leaders at the United Nations General Assembly’s High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis approved a Political Declaration with new targets for the next five years which include social benefit packages for TB patients.
The declaration aims to close funds for TB research and implementation of policies by 2027.
“Tuberculosis is as old as humanity itself,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s Director-General. “It has afflicted kings and queens, poets and politicians, revolutionaries and writers, activists and actors. No one was spared.
“It has been depicted in art, literature and opera. It has had many names: the white plague, the King’s evil, Scrofula, consumption,” he told delegates, according to a WHO statement.
One million deaths in 2021
In 2021, TB killed more than 1 million people and struck millions more. “In the time it takes me to make these remarks, 10 people will die with tuberculosis somewhere in the world.”
In the Sustainable Development Goals, the WHO Member States had committed to ending the global TB epidemic by 2030. At the first High-level meeting on TB in 2018, the members set ambitious targets for expanding treatment, prevention, testing, funding and research.
The target was to reach 40 million people with TB with treatment, and the WHO managed only 34 million. For preventive treatment to reach 30 million people, the agency reached half that many.
“We set a target to more than double funding for TB to $13 billion a year. But in fact, funding went backwards,” Dr Tedros said.
The WHO’s rapid diagnostics to test for TB takes less than two hours and there are treatments for drug-resistant TB, he said.
“But there is one important tool we still need, and that’s a new vaccine.
The only licensed TB vaccine was developed more than a century ago.
It saves thousands of lives every year by protecting young children but does not adequately protect adolescents and adults, who account for most TB transmission.”
BCG vaccine
The Bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccine is currently the only licensed TB vaccine. In countries where tuberculosis or leprosy is common, one dose is recommended in healthy babies as soon after birth as possible.
has been formed to facilitate the development, licensing and use of new TB vaccines.
The WHO has now established a TB vaccine accelerator council, to facilitate the development, licensing and equitable use of new TB vaccines. The high-level members of the council met for the first time this week.
The council will have subsidiary bodies to support its interaction and engagement with different sectors and stakeholders. It includes the private sector, scientists, philanthropy, and civil society.
“The political declaration countries approved today, and the targets they have set, are a commitment to use those tools, and develop new ones, to write the final chapter in the story of TB,” Dr Tedros said.
The TB bacteria usually attack the lungs. It is also capable of infecting any part of the body such as the kidney, spine, and brain. Though tuberculosis is spread from person to person through the air, it is not easy to become infected. TB can be fatal if it’s not treated.
