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Countries commit to intensifying efforts to end TB
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Fight against TB: WHO South-East Asia Region Office (SEARO) member countries have agreed to accelerate efforts to end TB in the region, according to a statement adopted at the End TB Summit in New Delhi, India, on March 14. (Kompas.com/File)
W
HO South-East Asia Region Office (SEARO) member countries committed Wednesday to intensifying efforts to ensure rapid and concrete progress toward achieving the End TB by 2030 goal.
In a statement adopted at the End TB Summit in New Delhi, India, on March 14, the countries unanimously agreed to actualize and intensify actions agreed upon in the Delhi Call to Action adopted in March last year.
The region comprises one-fourth of the global population, but a disproportionate 46 percent of those with TB live in the region.
“Progress against TB in this region will have a major impact on progress globally,” said WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
(Read also: Global leaders to meet to fast-track End TB efforts)
Ghebreyesus further said: “Too much is at stake, we cannot afford to fail. We must remember that the war against TB will be won in communities. It will be won by nurses, doctors, community health workers and others at the front lines.”
“We must give them the resources they need to find every last person with TB, to diagnose them, to treat them and to cure them,”he said in a statement on Wednesday.
Although efforts had been made to raise awareness on TB and boost investment, the overall response has fallen short of what was required to reach the critical threshold for ending TB.
They stressed their firm intent to collectively deal with 2 million missing TB cases and 150,000 multidrug-resistance cases by 2020 and implement a response that is demonstrably adequate for ending TB.
