On September 22, 2023, in New York, during the second United Nations high-level meeting on the fight against tuberculosis, world leaders, civil society representatives and other stakeholders approved a declaration to advance efforts to end tuberculosis (TB) by 2030.
The document lays out ambitious new targets for the next five years that include reaching 90 per cent of people with TB prevention and care services, providing social benefit packages to those who have the disease, and licensing at least one new vaccine.
“Why, after all the progress we have made – from sending man to the moon, to bringing the world to our fingertips – have we been unable to defeat a preventable and curable disease that kills over 4,400 people a day?” said the President of the UN General Assembly, Dennis Francis.
TB is the second leading infectious killer worldwide after COVID-19, with some 1.6 million deaths in 2021 alone, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The only available vaccine is more than a century old.