The chapter highlights the successes and challenges in global efforts to combat TB since 2007.
04 May 2017 | GENEVA – The World Health Organization (WHO) today released the chapter on the fight against tuberculosis (TB) in the Director-General’s new report, Ten years in public health 2007-2017. The report chronicles the evolution of global public health over the decade that Dr Margaret Chan served as Director-General at WHO.
The chapter highlights the successes and challenges in global efforts to combat TB since 2007, when the fight against TB faced two major crises: a continuing co-epidemic of TB/HIV ravaging Africa and the emergence of more deadly drug resistance strains called XDR-TB or extensively drug-resistant TB. It elaborates the critical role played by WHO and its partners through a culture of innovation, leading to breakthroughs in diagnosis, treatment and the roll-out of a new Strategy to end TB.
Commenting on the chapter, Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of the WHO Global TB Programme said: “In the past few years, we devoted a lot of time to ensuring the best standards of care were respected by all and that innovations get to the field. In the last year especially, the TB fight has been elevated from the technical to the highest political levels. We have built a momentum that will culminate with a WHO Global Ministerial Conference on Ending TB in the Sustainable Development Era to be held in Moscow in November 2017 and a high-level meeting on TB at the 2018 UN General Assembly. Therefore, as we look to the future with great hope, it is good to reflect on the journey we have made and the impact of millions of lives saved to get to where we are despite all our current limitations and lack of sufficient resources. The future will be better than the past, as we were able to build the essential platform to fight TB till the end”.
Read the chapter on TB in the report from Dr Chan on highlights and challenges of the past 10 years in public health.
http://www.who.int/publications/10-year-review/tb/en/
Source: WHO