After six years as UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to Stop Tuberculosis, Jorge Sampaio’s time has come to an end. In a farewell message Sampaio, who only fully realised the full magnitude of TB when becoming Special Envoy, reminds world dignitaries that:

In 2010, a survey conducted in Minsk, Belarus found that nearly one out of every two (47.8 percent) TB patients had multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). These were the highest MDR-TB levels ever recorded. In response, the Belarusian Ministry of Health conducted a nationwide survey to better understand drug resistance across the country, as well as the risk factors that lead to MDR-TB.

On 4 December, the first meeting of the Regional Interagency Collaborative Committee on TB care and control (RICC-TB) took place in Copenhagen. The TB Europe Coalition had been pushing for the creation of this oversight mechanism for the past few years to make sure a stronger commitment be made in the fight against drug-resistant TB in the European region.

The following post is brought to you by Steve Lewis, the Global Health Advocacy Manager at RESULTS UK, who last week attended a hearing in European Parliament on ‘Funding crisis at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and its impact on EU countries most affected by multi-drug resistant TB, in particular Romania’:

Last week the World Health Organisation (WHO) released their seventeenth global report on tuberculosis, providing a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the TB epidemic and progress in implementing and financing TB prevention, care and control.

Following the TB Europe Coalition’s visit to Romania last year, the Coalition found itself collaborating with Romanian Angel Appeal (RAA), a charity working on health issues and a principal recipient of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. RAA organised an advocacy training for members of the Stop TB Partnership Romania and asked TBEC to help facilitate the two-day workshop.

The Republic of Moldova has a considerable TB problem. In 2011, out of a population of 3 million, 4,208 people were diagnosed with TB. Compare this to the 3,528 people diagnosed with TB in Germany, out of a population of 82 million, and the alarming rate of TB in Moldova really hits home. Moreover, Moldovan has a high burden of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) that makes tackling the problem significantly more difficult. 19 percent of all new cases of TB in Moldova are estimated to be MDR and 51 percent of all retreated cases.

There is a certain absurdity about an American anthropologist traveling to Brussels to the European Union to report on drug-resistant tuberculosis and brief decision-makers on the severity of TB in Romania. While some consider TB in Romania to be a national issue, TB is never a ‘national matter’. Fighting it requires the cooperation of national governments, international organizations, public and private researchers, as well as the international corporations that produce lifesaving TB medicines and diagnostic equipment. Even in the comparatively wealthy economies of Europe, it is not well controlled.

The Romanian Stop TB Campaign has launched a TB awareness campaign in Romania calling on Romanian decision makers to step up and to save lives. The main goals of the campaign are to raise awareness and to urge the Government and decision makers to approve and fully fund Romania’s proposed national multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) plan for 2012-15.

Last week, TB advocates from across Europe and Central Asia, ranging from Belgium to Kazakhstan, gathered in London for the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease conference to make their voices heard and to exchange experiences and best practices.