By Edward Williams
Ho, March 24, GNA – The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for an urgent investment of resources to protect and maintain tuberculosis (TB) care and support services for people in need across regions and countries.
“TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, responsible for over one million people annually bringing devastating impacts on families and communities.”
The theme for this year’s World Tuberculosis (TB) Day marked on March 24 annually, is “Yes! We Can End TB: Commit, Invest, Deliver,” with a campaign highlighting a rallying cry for urgency, accountability, and hope.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said the huge gains the world had made against TB over the past 20 years were now at risk as cuts to funding started to disrupt access to services for prevention, screening, and treatment for people with TB.
“But we cannot give up on the concrete commitments that world leaders made at the UN General Assembly just 18 months ago to accelerate work to end TB. WHO is committed to working with all donors, partners and affected countries to mitigate the impact of funding cuts and find innovative solutions.”
Global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 79 million lives since 2000, however, the drastic and abrupt cuts in global health funding happening now are threatening to reverse the gains.
“Rising drug resistance especially across Europe and the ongoing conflicts across the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe, are further exacerbating the situation for the most vulnerable.”
Early reports to WHO revealed that severe disruptions in the TB response are seen across several of the highest-burden countries following the funding cuts with countries in the WHO African Region experiencing the greatest impact, followed by countries in the WHO South-East Asian and Western Pacific Regions.
WHO identified 27 countries to be facing crippling breakdowns in their TB response, with devastating consequences, such as human resource shortages undermining service delivery; diagnostic services severely disrupted, delaying detection and treatment and data and surveillance systems collapsing, compromising disease tracking and management.
Other consequences include community engagement efforts, including active case finding, screening, and contact tracing, deteriorating, leading to delayed diagnoses and increased transmission risks.
WHO said nine countries report failing TB drug procurement and supply chains, jeopardizing treatment continuity and patient outcomes.
“The 2025 funding cuts further exacerbate an already existing under funding for global TB response. In 2023, only 26 per cent of the 22 billion US dollars annually needed for TB prevention and care was available, leaving a massive shortfall. TB research is in crisis, receiving just one-fifth of the 5 billion US dollars annual target in 2022, severely delaying advancements in diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines”.
The WHO is leading efforts to accelerate TB vaccine development through the TB Vaccine Accelerator Council, but progress remains at risk without urgent financial commitments.
In response to the urgent challenges threatening TB services worldwide, WHO’s Director-General and Civil Society Task Force on Tuberculosis have issued a decisive statement.
The joint statement demanded immediate, coordinated efforts from governments, global health leaders, donors, and policymakers to prevent further disruptions.
The statement outlines five critical priorities including addressing TB service disruptions urgently, ensuring responses match the crisis’s scale, securing sustainable domestic funding, guaranteeing uninterrupted and equitable access to TB prevention and care, safeguarding essential TB services, including access to life-saving drugs, diagnostics, treatment and social protections, alongside cross-sector collaboration.
Other priorities are establishing or revitalizing national collaboration platforms, fostering alliances among civil society, NGOs, donors, and professional societies to tackle challenges and enhancing monitoring and early warning systems to assess real-time impact and detect disruptions early.
Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director of WHO’s Global Programme on TB and Lung Health, noted that the urgent call was timely and underscored the necessity of swift, decisive action to sustain global TB progress and prevent setbacks that could cost lives.
“Investing in ending TB is not only a moral imperative but also an economic necessity, every dollar spent on prevention and treatment yields an estimated 43 US dollars in economic returns.”
As one of the solutions to combating growing resource constraints, WHO is driving the integration of TB and lung health within primary healthcare as a sustainable solution.
By tackling TB determinants alongside communicable and non-communicable diseases, lung conditions, and disabilities through a unified strategy, WHO aims to reinforce the global response and drive lasting improvements in health outcomes.
GNA
MA/KOA