2023-05-09 02:43:57
Monday’s event aims to set the stage for the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in September, which will feature a meeting on tuberculosis.
The latter is the most common deadly infectious disease today, killing around 4,400 people every day worldwide, including 700 children, said Dr. Lucica Ditiu, chief executive of the Stop TB Partnership.
UN Under-Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said international efforts to fight the disease have saved 74 million lives since 2000. However, more than 10.5 million people have contracted the disease and about 6.1 million died in 2021, and it is now the leading cause of death among people living with HIV.
The TB epidemic is fueled by a multitude of factors, including poverty, malnutrition and HIV, and disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in all countries, she said.
According to her, $22 billion is needed to provide all people diagnosed with tuberculosis with access to quality treatment by 2027, as well as access to health and social services so that they do not suffer from tuberculosis. financial difficulties. It also indicates that an additional $5 billion per year is needed for research.
“We can develop safe and effective vaccines and one-stop-shops for quality testing and care,” she pleaded.
United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a video address to the meeting that COVID-19 “has turned our world upside down” for three years, and that in plus the millions of deaths attributed to it, it has deprived millions of people of essential health services.
“Conflicts in Europe, Africa and the Middle East have made these essential services even harder to access for people living with TB,” he said. These challenges have been a setback in the fight against TB, undoing some of the significant gains we have made over the past 20 years in expanding access to prevention, testing and treatment.”
Ukraine has the highest estimated number of people with TB in the European region at 34,000. It is also home to a high number of people with drug-resistant TB, Dr Ditiu pointed out.
Mr. Ghebreyesus argued that the September meeting must be a turning point in reviving the fight against the disease. This is why the WHO “has proposed to establish a tuberculosis vaccine acceleration council to facilitate the development, registration and use of new vaccines”.
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