Donors: Mobilising funds vital for TB fight

 THERE is an urgent need of at least US$1.6 billion in international funding for the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis (TB), according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Global Fund 

(GF).

WHO director-general Dr Margaret Chan and GF executive director Dr Mark Dybul said in a statement last week that the only way to carry out urgent work of identifying new cases of TB while making progress against existing ones would be to mobilise significant funding from international donors.

With majority of the funding coming through Global Fund, both organisations said it was important that efforts to raise money this year be effective. 

WHO and Global Fund were also alarmed about the growing threat of multi-drug resistant TB that was making funding issues more pressing.

“We are threading water at a time when we desperately need to scale up our response to multi-drug resistant TB,” Chan said.

“We have gained a lot of ground in TB control through international collaboration but it can easily be lost if we do not act now.”

WHO and Global Fund have identified an anticipated gap of US$1.6 billion in annual international support for the fight against TB in 118 low and middle income countries on top of an estimated US$3.2 billion that could be provided by the countries themselves. 

Filling this gap could enable full treatment for 17 million TB and multi-drug resistant TB patients and save six million lives by 2016.

“It is critical that we raise the funding that is urgently needed to control this disease. If we don’t act now our costs will sky-rocket. It is invest now or pay forever,” Dybul said. 

Meanwhile, the millennium development goal of turning around the TB epidemic has already been met but the 2% decline in the number of people falling ill with TB each year remained too slow.