Courtesy, World Health Organization

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It marks the date 141 years ago – the 24th of March 1882 – that the German scientist Robert Koch first presented his discovery of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, or TB.

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Since then, we have come a long way. We have tests, treatments and a vaccine against TB that have saved countless lives. TB is a preventable, treatable and curable disease.

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Since 2000, deaths from TB have dropped by nearly 40% globally, and more than 74 million people have received access to TB services.

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And yet it still kills 1.6 million people each year and affects millions more, with enormous impacts on families and communities.  

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The COVID-19 pandemic, and conflicts in many countries, have severely disrupted services to prevent, detect and treat TB.

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As a result, WHO last year reported an increase in TB deaths for the first time in more than a decade.

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In 2015, the nations of the world committed to ending the global TB epidemic by 2030, in the Sustainable Development Goals.

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This September, world leaders will meet in New York for The Second High-Level Meeting on TB.

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We believe that meeting should be a turning point in the fight against TB, if leaders make real and lasting commitments to invest in the response to TB.

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Ending TB by 2030 is an extremely ambitious target.

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To support that target, we established the WHO Flagship Initiative on TB five years ago, to advance research and to increase access to TB services.

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We need to make the tools we have available to more people. But we also need new tools.

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Increasing drug resistance is undermining the effectiveness of some medicines that are used to treat TB.

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And the only TB vaccine developed to date, the BCG vaccine, is more than 100 years old, and does not adequately protect adolescents and adults, who account for most TB transmission.

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That’s why WHO has proposed establishing a TB Vaccine Acceleration Council, to facilitate the development, licensing and use of new TB vaccines. . . "

Quote Courtesy: WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus