AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has called on world leaders to urgently focus efforts on Tuberculosis prevention and mitigate millions of avoidable deaths.
According to AHF, now is the time for global leaders “to urgently focus efforts on TB prevention and mitigate millions of avoidable deaths.”
AHF Chief of Global Advocacy and Policy, Terri Ford, who made the appeal in his goodwill message to mark the 2023 World Tuberculosis Day, said that TB which is one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases is being neglected even as it continues to claim millions of lives annually.
The theme of this year’s event which is marked on March 24 is: “Yes! We Can End TB”. This year’s event is about honoring the millions of lives lost to TB while renewing the urgency around prevention, treatment, and research for the disease, which has been a crisis for many decades.
According to statistics by the World Health Organisation, TB claimed 1.6 million lives, and over 10 million people acquired TB in 2021 globally. Despite this huge figure, the UN agency noted that it is woefully neglected and underfunded in many countries. Even though tuberculosis is a global epidemic, over 95% of TB deaths occur in lower-income countries.
WHO further estimates that funding to fight the disease globally is still less than 40 per cent of what was needed to prevent and treat TB in 2022.
Ford said, “AHF has made TB a top priority with efforts focused on educating our staff and clients, screening for TB in our clinics, and prioritizing, preventing, and treating HIV/TB co-infection, the number one cause of death for people living with HIV. As a preventable and treatable disease, world leaders must do more to end TB, and we’re calling on them to do just that on World TB Day and beyond.
“With our World TB Day theme ‘Yes! We Can End TB,’ AHF urges all governments and public health institutions to do their part to ensure TB research, prevention, and treatment programs are fully funded and supported. We all must do more to finally stop TB worldwide, particularly in lower-income countries.”
Country Programme Director, AHF Nigeria, Dr. Echey Ijezie, urged the federal government to increase funding available for treatment of TB patient.
Aside funding, Dr. Ijezie said there was a need to also increase the level of education on the disease especially with its prevalence in the country.
“Ending TB for us in Nigeria must come with intensified level of case finding and for patients who show up in hospitals to embrace treatment, which is free across health facilities in the country. Importantly, we must increase the funding available to TB, improve the level of education and awareness about TB, as well as engage pointedly, the rising incidences of stigma related to TB while not forgetting that TB is curable.
‘‘Nigeria’s situation deserves urgent attention as the World Health Organization (WHO) lists the nation among the ten countries accounting for 64% of the global gap in TB case finding, with India, Indonesia and Nigeria accounting for almost half of the total gap’’, he said.
AHF is a global non-profit organization providing cutting-edge medicine and advocacy to over 1.7 million people in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, Asia/Pacific Region, and Europe. It is currently the largest non-profit provider of HIV/AIDS medical care in the world.
