It's Our Responsibility to End TB - the World's Oldest Pandemic

The Stop TB Partnership has launched a detailed strategy to finally put an end to the world's oldest pandemic.

It also lays out how, from now up to 2030, a global investment of U.S.$250 billion could save millions of lives through early diagnosis and treatment of 50 million people with TB - the development, approval and distribution of a new TB vaccine, and the redoubling of efforts so that emerging crises like the Covid-19 pandemic or conflicts, like the ongoing war in Ukraine, do not derail TB programs.

The Global Plan maps out how to end TB as a public health challenge by 2030 - the year by which governments around the world committed to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG three is to "ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all and all ages," and one of the targets includes ending the TB epidemic. 

Dr. Lucica Ditiu, the executive director at the Stop TB Partnership says ending TB by 2030 is a sustainable development goal and it's our responsibility as humans to be able to end TB. She says the plan is to bring it down to a level that can be controlled - which is an average of around 10 per hundred thousand globally by 2030.