WHO and Global Fund sign cooperation agreement
Strategic Initiative to reach missed TB cases a critical component of grant
01 December 2017 | GENEVA - The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) extended their close partnership with a new cooperation agreement to help countries accelerate efforts to end the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic by 2030. The overall agreement includes financing support for all three diseases - HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, as part of efforts to achieve universal health coverage.
“The agreement will enable the rapid uptake and scale up
of policies, successful approaches and innovations, as well as
promote the better use of data in reaching people with TB who
miss out on care,” said Dr Haileyesus Getahun, Director
a.i. WHO Global TB Programme. “The signing of this
agreement on World AIDS Day - which focuses on the right to
health and making everybody count, signals the commitment of
both organizations in empowering countries to ensure no one is
left behind in reaching care. We stand ready to take this
initiative forward with the Global Fund and partners, which will
be a critical catalyst in reaching the global End TB targets by
2030.”
The TB-component of the agreement places special emphasis on
finding people with TB who are missed by health systems. As
reported by WHO this year, of the estimated 10.4 million new
cases in 2016, only 6.3 million were detected and officially
notified, leaving a gap of 4.1 million people who were missed.
This is largely due to under-reporting and under-diagnosis of
people with TB, especially in countries with large unregulated
private sectors, weak health systems and poor engagement of
community stakeholders. These people do not get the TB care that
they need and deserve. For people with drug-resistant TB, the
situation is even more exacerbated with only one in five people
with MDR-TB gaining access to treatment.
“The Global Fund is pushing boundaries to close the case
detection gap which has plagued the overall TB response for
years,” said Dr Eliud Wandwalo, Senior Disease
Coordinator, TB, at the Global Fund. “We have set an
ambitious target of finding and treating an additional 1.5
million missing cases of TB with the support of global health
partners and implementers from 13 countries by the end of 2019.
We hope this will provide much-needed impetus at all levels to
begin closing gaps and ensuring universal access to
care.”
WHO and the Global Fund have a long and successful partnership
working together to scale-up HIV, TB and malaria interventions
and strengthen health systems in many countries. This
collaborative effort has resulted in significant reductions in
the disease burdens of HIV, TB and malaria worldwide, saving
millions of lives since 2002.
Read the WHO feature story
Source:
WHO
