South East Asian health ministers commit to speed up efforts to end TB

The health ministers of countries in WHO South-East Asia Region on Tuesday said they are committed to renew and accelerate efforts to end tuberculosis, in view of the pandemic disrupting services and leading to an increase in TB cases in the already high-burden Region.

The ministers agreed to increase budgetary and human resource allocations including upfront investments required to catch-up on lost ground during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is estimated that $3 billion may be needed annually to implement comprehensive set of interventions required to end TB in the Region.

At the day-long meeting held virtually, the Ministers of Health signed on a ‘Ministerial Statement of Commitment’ unanimously committing to actualize and intensify essential interventions. The meeting was organized by ministries of health of India, Indonesia, and Nepal and WHO South-East Asia Regional Office.

The Ministerial statement called for ensuring the highest attainable standards of rights-based, stigma-free, quality-assured and people-centric services. It emphasized that preventive, diagnostic, treatment, rehabilitative and palliative care, should be accessible to all including migrants, prisoners, children, the aged and other high-risk populations such as people with TB/HIV co-infections.

The statement called for increasing outreach of care by strengthening services at all possible health centers and use of digital health to reach the unreached. The ministers also committed to mainstream social and financial protection along with TB care services.

“Despite being a preventable and treatable, TB kills more than a million people every year, almost half of them in the WHO South East-Asia Region. We must intensify effort towards ending TB,” said Tedros Adhanom, Director-General, WHO, addressing a High-Level Meeting for Renewed TB Response.

The WHO South-East Asia Region, home to a quarter of the world's population, bears 43% of the global TB burden and one third of the global burden of drug resistant TB.

In 2017 Regional Director Poonam Khetrapal Singh announced ‘Accelerated efforts to end TB’ as a regional flagship.

At a high-level meeting, Ministers of Health and WHO adopted a ‘Call to Action’ committing to more resources and action to end the disease.

In 2018, the Region renewed its commitment to further intensify efforts and ensure rapid and concrete progress to end TB by 2030.

With concerted efforts and highest-level commitment, progress was being made to trace and treat the affected to curtail the TB epidemic.

Notification of TB cases increased to 3.6 million cases in 2019 from 2.6 million cases in 2015. As a result, the total treatment coverage increased by about 30%. The treatment success rate among new drug-sensitive TB (DS-TB) patients increased from 79% among the 2014 cohort to 84% for the 2018 cohort. Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand were on track to achieve the 2020 End TB milestones for reduction in mortality while Myanmar was also on track to reach the milestone for reduction in incidence rate.

However, the pandemic reversed the progress by disrupting access to health services and exacerbating social factors like poverty and undernutrition. Over 4.3 million TB cases are estimated to have emerged in 2020 with the region accounting for 43% of all new TB cases globally.