Conflict in Ukraine and Sudan is causing an alarming rise in TB.
Dunya News
INTERNATIONAL (AP) — The development of new vaccinations and the fight against a rise in TB brought on by the effects of COVID-19 and conflicts like those in the Ukraine and Sudan were among the priorities of top U.N. officials, business executives in the health sector, and campaigners on Monday.
Many TB patients spoke at the crowded event, which was punctuated by activists chanting “End TB Now,” and U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed gave the keynote address. She discussed how her father contracted tuberculosis and passed it on to her sister, who was two years old at the time; her sister, who is now 50, is a survivor.
Dr. Lucica Ditiu, executive director of the Stop TB Partnership, stated this in advance of Monday’s hearing to get ready for a high-level meeting on September 22 during the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly. Tuberculosis kills roughly 4,400 people every day worldwide, including 700 children.
According to the U.N. deputy secretary-general, efforts to combat TB have saved 74 million lives since 2000. However, more than 10.5 million people have contracted the illness, and it is now the main cause of death for those living with HIV.
Mohammed emphasised that these causes of the illness must be tackled since they contribute to the TB pandemic and disproportionately afflict the most vulnerable people in all nations. These causes include poverty, malnutrition, and HIV.
According to her, $22 billion will be required by 2027 to ensure that all persons with TB diagnoses have access to appropriate care as well as health and social benefits so they don’t face financial difficulty. An extra $5 billion will be required each year for TB research and innovation.
Mohammed stated, “We can provide straightforward one-stop shops for high-quality testing and services as well as safe and efficient TB vaccinations. This would alter the playing field.
In a video address to the gathering, U.N. World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that COVID-19 “turned our world upside-down” for three years and that in addition to the millions of deaths, it also prevented millions of people from receiving vital medical care, including treatment for tuberculosis.
Conflicts in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East have made it more difficult for persons with TB to get life-saving care, he claimed. “These issues have caused a reversal in some of the important advancements we have achieved over the past 20 years in enhancing access to prevention, testing, and treatment for TB, which has been a setback in the battle against this disease.
The head of the WHO stated that the high-level gathering in September must serve as a turning point in reviving progress in the battle against TB, not only by enhancing current instruments but also by creating new ones, such as new TB vaccinations. It is for this reason that WHO “has proposed establishing a TB vaccine accelerator council to facilitate the development, licencing and use of new TB vaccines,” according to Ghebreyesus.
The chief medical officer of BioNTech, Dr. Zlem Türeci, informed the gathering that the company just began testing a novel TB vaccine candidate. BioNTech and Pfizer collaborated to produce one of the key COVID-19 vaccines utilising messenger RNA technology.
According to Ditiu of the Stop TB Partnership, three or four previous TB vaccines have taken 19 years to reach phase 3 trials whereas a COVID vaccine was produced in less than a year. This is due to a lack of funding.
“We didn’t see very dramatic cases of TB before Covid,” she added, “but after Covid we saw a type of TB that we saw in… movies in which people spit blood and they are very weak, and so on.” Covid, like TB, is spread via the air.
According to Ditiu, the COVID’s economic effects and wars, particularly in Ukraine but now also in Sudan, are having “a huge impact” on attempts to treat TB patients and identify new cases.
She said at a news conference on Thursday that Ukraine has the largest estimated number of TB cases in the European region—34,000—as well as a high rate of drug-resistant TB.
Ditiu praised the Ukrainian people for their “amazing resilience” in trying to keep TB services available, calling it exceptional. However, a number of individuals undoubtedly departed the nation.
Despite this, she claimed, significant attempts have been made to find individuals who are infected; yet, everyone is concerned about making sure that people in Ukraine have access to treatment.
In 2021, 18,000 individuals in Sudan received treatment, according to the Stop TB Partnership, which is run by the U.N. Office for Project Services and strives to create a world free of tuberculosis.
Given the continued hostilities and the near-total breakdown of the health system, Ditiu described the scenario for TB patients as “probably like a ticking bomb.”
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