The ecstatic press releases started even before the conference to replenish the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria officially closed last month in Montreal. The fund, which channels donor money to local programs that fight the three diseases in places where they are the most damaging, especially sub-Saharan Africa, had put out a call for $13 billion for its next three years of programming. By the end of the conference, the fund had raised $12.9 billion.

The global tuberculosis response has consistently suffered funding shortages, which contributed to the disease surpassing AIDS in 2014 as the world’s leading infectious killer. Now — in a bid to end the pandemic by 2035 — a new strategy is looking to alternative funding sources and new spending models that will help officials better take advantage of the available resources.

It is common for patients to arrive at Dr Kasauli Mahmoud Zinda’s private clinic in Bwaise, just north of Kampala’s humming business district, with a persistent cough, little appetite and a fever that, even after various treatments, just will not break. Zinda knows the symptoms usually add up to tuberculosis. With itinerant residents crowded into poorly ventilated homes and shops, the conditions in the impoverished neighbourhood are ideal for transmitting the disease.