There has been very limited comments on the media and even in academic journals on the major changes in the strategies of tuberculosis, globally and at the national level.
At the Global level a High-Level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on the End TB Strategy was held in September 2023. In the same week there were similar high-level meetings on pandemic preparedness and on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) – and these got more attention. The meeting on Tuberculosis has adopted the “ Political Declaration on the High-Level Meeting on the Fight Against Tuberculosis” (1)(UNGA,2023)
The declaration on tuberculosis is a welcome international call for ending the TB epidemic by 2035. This is a reiteration of the call that was first adopted by the UN in 2018. In public discourse this is often expressed as eliminating the disease as a public health problem by 2030, or as making the country or the world TB free. A more precise definition of the goal would be achieving the SDG 2030 targets for TB, followed by WHO End TB targets by 2035 globally, and that means achieving an annual TB incidence of <10 per lac population. Achieving this increases chances of eliminating TB by 2050. The SDG 2030 target is a 90 percent reduction in the incidence of all active disease in adults, children and drug resistant cases and a 90 percent decline in the number of people who die from TB annually by 2027, compared to 2015. It also aims for achieving preventive treatment of 90 percent of all latent TB, and all active cases being diagnosed with molecular diagnostics as compared to sputum microscopy and X-rays and treated with the latest recommendation in drug regimens. Further all, 100 percent of tuberculosis patients would be protected from financial hardship due to TB care.