NEW YORK — Steady progress will simply not be enough in the fight against tuberculosis, according to a new report on TB released by the World Health Organization. Instead, the report calls for accelerated progress in order to meet the WHO End TB Strategy and UN Sustainable Development Goal targets on the disease by 2030.

The WHO released its Global Tuberculosis Report 2018 today at a press briefing at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The press briefing can be viewed here on UN Web TV.

The WHO report details the current status of the global TB epidemic and the progress that has been made over the past year. It also highlights ongoing gaps in diagnosis and treatment, and in research and development, and it details the political commitments and funding needed to accelerate progress on tackling the disease.

Tuberculosis in 2017

“By 2020, the TB incidence rate (new cases per 100,000 population per year) needs to be falling at 4–5% per year, and the proportion of people with TB who die from the disease (the case fatality ratio, CFR) needs to fall to 10%,” in order to be on track to reach 2030 targets, according to the report.

However, the incidence rate of TB in 2017 only fell at a rate of 2 percent, while the proportion of people who die from the disease was at 16 percent, which will not be sufficient to reach targets by 2030, the report said.

In 2017, approximately 10 million people developed TB globally, and of these, “9% were people living with HIV (72% in Africa) and two thirds were in eight countries: India (27%), China (9%), Indonesia (8%), the Philippines (6%), Pakistan (5%), Nigeria (4%), Bangladesh (4%) and South Africa (3%),” it details.

Nearly half of the world’s multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) cases were in India, China and Russia, according to the report, and of these cases, 8.5 percent were estimated to have extremely drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).

Political Commitments

The report was released just in time for the UN High-Level Meeting on TB to be held on 26 September at the UN headquarters in New York. “Next week’s UN high-level meeting comes at a critical time,” Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO Global TB Programme, told the press briefing.

“We must seize the moment,” she said. “It’s high time for urgent decisive actions and investments to drive down the suffering and death caused by this disease, and close the system gaps in care and prevention. It’s unacceptable that in the twenty-first century, millions lose their lives from this preventable and curable disease. This must end. The time for action is now.”

Also present at the press briefing was Koro Bessho, permanent representative of Japan to the UN and co-facilitator of the political declaration on TB. He described some of the targets set by the political declaration on TB [pdf] that reflect those in the WHO TB report.

These targets include treating 40 million affected people, and providing preventative treatment to 30 million more between 2018 and 2022. To meet these targets, he explained, will require financing in the amount of $13 billion annually for prevention, diagnosis and treatment, and $2 billion annually for research by 2022.

“We hope that the political leadership shown in this meeting, and in this declaration, will become a reality, in order to fight tuberculosis to meet the 2030 Agenda goal of ending tuberculosis by 2030,” he said.

Image Credits: WHO.