Addis Ababa, March 25, 2022(Walta) – WHO Regional Director for Africa stressed that governments across the globe, the global fund, private sectors, civil societies, and academia need to give serious attention to the world’s deadliest infectious disease of TB and attain the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) target of ending the epidemic by 2030.
Following this year’s World TB Day on March 24 each year for raising public awareness and understanding about the impact of the disease, the director Dr.Matshidiso Moeti send the message to the global leaders urging them to work cooperatively to control the high spread of the pandemic.
Citing this year’s theme “Invest to end TB,” Save lives”, the Director emphasized that concerned bodies should give serious attention to the disease and take commitment to end it. She also noted that TB diseases are one of the globe’s deadliest infectious diseases, devastating health, and the cause of social and economic impacts.
According to the director, world leaders agreed to mobilize 13 billion USD per year to finance TB prevention and treatment by 2022 at the UN high-level meeting on the issue in 2018. Those leaders also promised another two billion USD per year TB research in the face of growing concern around drug-resistant of the pandemic.
“However, funding for TB prevention, diagnosis, and treatment services continues to fall far short of estimated global needs, and the United Nations global target. In 2020, global spending on TB services fell to 5.3 billion USD, and funding for research was 901 million USD,” she stated.
“Though the national strategic plans and accompanying budgets for tuberculosis have grown in ambition, mobilization of funding has not kept pace. In this regard, governments contribute merely 22 percent of the resources required to deliver adequate TB service in Africa with 44 percent going un¬funded,” the Director added.
South Africa is the best exemplary country which has 81 percent of domestic funding to TB control while Zambia increased seven-fold since 2015 in 2020, she noted.
As to the director, if governments do not have an adequate emphasis on the epidemic, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target by 2030 will not be succeeded.
The director further stated that Africa shares 36 percent of the TB disease in the world. Therefore, it needs to increase investment to prevent millions of people from the pandemic.
She also called on governments, and the contribution of the global fund to mobilize additional investment to control the disease and achieve the 2030 SDGs, according to the Ethiopian Herald.