Tuberculosis (TB) is the world’s most deadly infectious disease, killing 1.5 million people per year. The disease overwhelmingly impacts vulnerable and marginalized communities, including refugees and asylum seekers, incarcerated populations, and people living with HIV. Progress towards ending TB stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic, with TB mortality rates increasing for the first time in two decades.
On September 22 the United Nations convened a High-Level Meeting (HLM) on the Fight Against Tuberculosis to review global progress in ending TB since the first HLM in 2018 and to identify opportunities to meet global targets for reducing TB cases and deaths by 2030. In advance of the HLM, the Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis released a report on “Scientific Advances and the End of Tuberculosis.” The report identifies new prevention, diagnosis, and treatment tools that have the potential to revolutionize the global response to TB but warns that greater investments, improved accountability in key countries, redoubled efforts to reach the people at highest risk of TB with high-quality health services, and enhanced alignment between TB programs and the pandemic preparedness and response agenda are required.
Please join the CSIS Global Health Policy Center for a discussion about opportunities for accelerating progress in ending TB and better integrating TB and pandemic preparedness and response approaches. J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director at the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, will be joined by Nidhi Bouri, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Jaqueline Cuen, TB Survivor and Advocate, We Are TB, as well as Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis members Eric Goosby, Professor of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and Anthony Fauci, Distinguished University Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University.
This event is made possible by the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Photo: Shehzad Noorani/Majority World/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Brief by Katherine E. Bliss — November 12, 2021
Report by Katherine E. Bliss and Michael Rendelman — December 16, 2021
