4% annual decrease too slow to end TB by 2030

“Access to quality care and medications is limited. Women, children, adolescents – representing over 60% of the affected people – and the elderly are disproportionately affected by a severe reduction in health services, care and support.”

The Tuberculosis Action Plan for the WHO European Region, 2016–2020 has been developed to operationalize the global WHO End TB Strategy in the regional context. The Plan sets a regional goal and targets for the care and control of TB and drug-resistant TB from 2016 to 2020. It is currently in a midway of its implementation.

WHO/Europe: Fact sheets on Sustainable Development Goals: health targets

WHO/Europe releases a blueprint for a people-centred model of TB care that shifts care closer to people and communities.

New TB surveillance report released by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the WHO Regional Office for Europe ahead of World TB Day.

Public Health Panorama is the journal of the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe). It provides a platform to scientists and public health practitioners for the publication of lessons learned from the field, as well as original research work, to facilitate the use of evidence and good practice for public health action.

High rates of multidrug-resistant TB and TB in vulnerable populations, such as the homeless, drug and alcohol abusers and migrants from countries with high numbers of TB cases continue to challenge TB elimination in Europe.

WHO/Europe, the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network (EHRN) and other partners organized a high-level regional meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia from 28–30 September 2015, to address regional challenges and discuss ways towards a successful transition to domestic funding of national responses to HIV and tuberculosis (TB) epidemics in countries of eastern Europe and central Asia (EECA).

Implementing the consolidated action plan to prevent and combat multidrug- and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (M/XDR TB) in the WHO European Region since 2011, Member States have made several major achievements in prevention, control and care. More than 1 million TB patients have been cured, including 53 000 with MDR-TB. Key challenges remain, especially due to ongoing primary transmission, increasing resistance of strains and deadly TB and HIV co-infections. The expected effects of the new action plan for 2016–2020 include curing 1.4 million TB patients, preventing 1.7 million new cases and saving US$ 48 billion.