THE CALL TO ACTION ON TB
MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS UPDATE: THE CALL TO ACTION ON TB
There are crises that are so terrible and urgent that they merit immediate attention: an outbreak of a killer disease that wreaks havoc across a region, or a natural disaster which leaves tens of thousands desperate and destitute. Then there are crises to which the world has become inured.
Hon. Nick Herbert MP is a Member of the UK Parliament, first elected in 2005 and appointed as a Minister after the election in 2010. Prior to his election, he was the Director of Reform, the independent think tank which he co-founded in 2002. Since becoming an MP, he has taken a keen interest in tackling tuberculosis, especially in developing countries. In 2006 he was elected Co-Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB at the UK Parliament and was a leading figure in the establishment of the Global TB Caucus in 2014.
The global tuberculosis (TB) epidemic falls into this latter category.
It was not always like this. A hundred years ago TB was as common as flu is today. It claimed the lives of luminaries such as Keats, Orwell and Kafka. It featured in the popular culture of the day. It was responsible for as many as one in four deaths in Victorian England.
Yet today TB is a forgotten
disease. Too many people in the West believe that the battle has been won. How wrong they are. The weapons used to turn the tide are no longer as effective. The disease has made a comeback. It is widely understood that we have an effective vaccine when we do not. The golden age of antibiotics which promised the end of diseases like TB has passed: drug resistant strains of the disease are emerging that are effectively impossible to treat.
Most people in the UK think that TB no longer exists, yet
206 | The Parliamentarian | 2015: Issue Three
22 years ago the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared TB a ‘global health emergency’. Since then nearly 30 million lives have been lost. Progress has been made, but at the current rate of reduction, TB will remain a threat to public health for two hundred years.
That any progress has been made at all is largely due to the inclusion of TB in Millennium Development Goal 6, which in turn led to the establishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. The Global Fund provides nearly 90% of all international financing for the disease and has helped save millions of lives, but huge funding gaps remain.
Calls to step up the global response have been led by the BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and particularly Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, South Africa’s inspirational Health Minister. With some of the highest rates of TB in the world, South Africa has launched one of the biggest diagnosis and treatment campaigns, but the challenge is enormous.
My involvement with TB began in 2005 when I travelled to Kenya with a small group of colleagues from the UK Parliament and witnessed a TB epidemic about which I had never previously heard a thing. In response to what
we’d seen, we established an All Party Parliamentary Group on TB in the UK Parliament – a cross-party grouping of MPs and Members of the Houses of Commons and Lords who work together to raise awareness of TB and to press our government to support global action and the efforts of countries like South Africa in tackling the epidemic. In the last twelve months we have taken our campaign to a new level. TB is a global threat which requires a global response. So on World TB Day last year, 180 MPs from across the G7 Group signed a statement recognising the importance of the global TB epidemic. In the wake of the success of that effort, we decided to hold a global summit of parliamentarians, focusing on the disease.
With the tremendous support of Jose Castro, Executive Director of The Union (International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease) and thanks to the leadership of Minister Motsoaledi from South Africa, the TB Summit took place in Barcelona in October 2014. We were joined by representatives from nine countries spanning five continents, with messages of support from many others. It was the first global political meeting on TB for over a century.
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