World TB Day was observed globally, including Pakistan, on March 24 with the slogan “Stop TB in my lifetime” for the second time.
According to a statement issued on Sunday it was revealed that the overall stress would be on increasing funding for TB prevention, care and control efforts, while enhancing awareness of key progress in TB interventions and actions required to ensure further progress.
It is against this backdrop that the World Health Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) said that strains of tuberculosis with resistance to multiple drugs could spread widely. It highlighted an annual need of at least US$ 1.6 billion in international funding for treatment and prevention of the disease.
“Pakistan, which has the fifth highest burden of tuberculosis in the world and the fourth highest in terms of multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis, is working on many fronts to address the problems with the technical support of WHO and the financial support of GFATM, USAID, KNCV, JICA, DFID and a number of other development partners”, the statement said.
WHO Director General Dr Margaret Chan said that the only way to carry out the urgent work of identifying all new cases of tuberculosis would mobilise significant funding from international donors.
The WHO and the GFATM has identified an anticipated gap of US$1.6 billion in annual international support for the fight against tuberculosis in 118 low and middle income countries on top of an estimated US$3.2 billion that could be provided by the countries themselves.
Filling this gap could enable full treatment for 17 million TB and multidrug-resistant TB patients and save 6 million lives between 2014 and 2016.
