Commitment to end Tuberculosis by 2030 announced at World Health Organization conference

At a recent World Health Organization (WHO) conference in Moscow, Russia, 75 ministers committed to increase multisectoral action, progress and build accountability in an effort to end Tuberculosis (TB) by 2030.

The Moscow Declaration to End TB came at the first WHO Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Tuberculosis in the Sustainable Development Era: A Multisectoral Response. The declaration will inform the first UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on TB in 2018, which will seek additional pledges from heads of state.

“Today marks a critical landmark in the fight to end TB,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “It signals a long overdue global commitment to stop the death and suffering caused by this ancient killer.”

The two-day conference brought together brought together more than 1,000 participants from more than 114 countries.

The ministers agreed to work quickly to strengthen health systems and improve access to people-centered TB prevention and care in an effort to achieve universal health coverage, improve financing through increased domestic and international investments for implementation and research, support research and development of new tools to diagnose, treat and prevent TB and build accountability through a framework to track and review progress on ending TB across sectors. They also committed to efforts to limit the risk and spread of drug resistance and increase efforts to engage people and communities impacted by and at risk of TB.

Global work to fight TB have saved an estimated 53 million lives since 2000 and decreased the TB mortality rate by 37 percent, according to WHO.

“However, progress in many countries has stalled, global targets are off-track, and persistent gaps remain in TB care and prevention,” WHO said in a news release.

TB kills more people than any other infectious disease and is the leading killer of people with HIV.

“Tuberculosis is a complex, multi-sectoral problem that requires a systemic and highly coordinated response to address the conditions which drive the disease,” Professor Veronika Skvortsova, the Russian Federation minister of health, said. “The accountability framework we have agreed to develop marks a new beginning, and, with WHO’s support to coordinate and track progress, we expect the Moscow Declaration to lead us forward to the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly in 2018.”