Statement from FIRS (Forum of International Respiratory Societies) for World TB Day – 24 March 2018
Tokyo, 24 March 2018
On World TB Day, the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) calls on the United Nations (UN) General Assembly to commit to the urgent changes needed to end tuberculosis (TB), in their first High Level Meeting (HLM) on TB.
FIRS urges governments to ensure that their national response to TB is adequately funded and that national plans are implemented. In particular, we call on governments to support significant investment to improve TB prevention, diagnostic and treatment options so that the global TB epidemic will be eliminated by the End TB deadline in 2030.
TB is preventable and curable, yet it remains the world's most common infectious disease killer. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there were 10.4 million new active TB cases in 2016 – but only six million were diagnosed and notified. Drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) infections were on the rise, accounting for 600,000 of new cases. Yet only one in five people needing treatment for DR-TB received it. And only half of those who began treatment for DR-TB, survived the disease.
Despite the scale of the problem, TB continues to be chronically under-funded. The WHO estimates that research and development (R&D) budgets for TB currently have a funding gap of US$1.2 billion per year. In a year that will see the first-ever UN HLM on TB, this gap is untenable and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.
"TB is the world's most common infectious disease killer yet is identifiable, treatable and preventable; what is missing is the political will to dedicate the resources necessary to eradicate it, once and for all," said Dean E. Schraufnagel MD, Executive Director, FIRS.
FIRS is calling for the following points to be adopted at the UN HLM on TB and be enshrined in the declaration from that meeting, so that progress in combatting this deadly disease is accelerated:
For further details on FIRS and World TB Day 2018:
Jo Waters
Head of PR and Social Media Engagement
The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union)
Email: jwaters@theunion.org
All quoted TB statistics are from the Global Tuberculosis Report 2017, The World Health Organization
Figures relating to international migration courtesy of The History of Global Migration Governance by Alexander Betts and Lena Kainz; Refugee Studies Centre; Oxford Department of International Development: University of Oxford. July 2017
The Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) is an organization comprising the world's leading international respiratory societies working together to improve lung health globally: American Thoracic Society, American College of Chest Physicians, Association Latino Americana De Thorax, Asian Pacific Society of Respirology, European Respiratory Society, International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, Pan African Thoracic Society, Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease, and the Global Initiative for Asthma. The goal of FIRS is to unify and enhance efforts to improve lung health through the combined work of its more than 70,000 members globally.
The UN HLM on TB will be the fifth time the UN has called for a HLM devoted to a health issue but only the first-ever dedicated HLM on TB. The main outcome of the UN HLM on TB will be a Ministerial Declaration which is negotiated by two representatives of the Member States.
The meeting will be held in New York on 26 September 2018.