First-ever Interactive Civil Society Hearing to prepare the UN High-Level Meeting on TB took place on 4 June 2018 at the UN Headquarters in New York.

Oliver is a 27 year old male who decides to migrate to Europe after experiencing violence, conflict and uncertainty in his home country in sub-Saharan African. It takes him two months to travel to a North African country where he lives in a warehouse with 25 other migrants seeking to earn enough money to pay smugglers to get them across the Mediterranean to southern Europe. There, on top of experiencing food insecurity and poor sanitation, Oliver develops a persistent cough and loses weight, which he attributes to his arduous journey and difficulties since then. He finally saves enough money to make the treacherous trip across the Mediterranean.

Global life expectancy has increased by 10.2 years since 1980, with the most marked increases occurring over the past decade in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the expansion of antiretroviral therapy and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV activities have expanded life expectancy by more than ten years in countries with the highest HIV burdens.

When House Appropriations Committee members in 2014 asked then USAID Administrator Raj Shah how the U.S. could combat tuberculosis globally with 19 percent less money, he said not to worry. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief would fill the gap, he said.

The State Department’s funding document released following the White House budget today (February 9) shows the Administration proposed the same amount for tuberculosis programs this year as it did last year — even after releasing an ambitious plan to reach more people worldwide with treatment for drug resistant TB.

The Obama administration raised hopes and goals for HIV treatment and prevention last year, but today (February 9) released a budget with flat funding for the programs that must meet those goals.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Imagine you’re one of the 1.5 billion people who live in one of the 42 countries currently affected by war and conflict. One day you must flee with your family and leave everything you’ve known behind in a desperate attempt to save your life. Now you’re one of the 60 million globally who have been displaced from their homes.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – One million people have been infected by mycobacterium bovis over the past decade, scientists said here this week. The zoonotic strain of tuberculosis, acquired from livestock, is clinically indistinguishable from the most common airborne strain, but results in longer, more costly treatments, more drug resistance, and more deaths than mycobacterium tuberculosis, scientists said.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – It wasn’t necessarily the health system in Zimbabwe that saved Constance Manwa when she was diagnosed with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis two years after being diagnosed with HIV. While an integrated care system had detected her HIV when she went in for prenatal care, the same system failed to quickly diagnose her MDR-TB, only correctly diagnosing her condition five months after she showed symptoms. At that point, Manwa was emaciated, relying on a walking stick and leaning on her mother to walk.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Health care workers should be considered a key population along with prisoners, miners, and other populations that are at higher risk than the general public of becoming infected with tuberculosis, speakers here said Friday (December 4).