The Union successfully submitted the following intervention for two agenda items on ending tuberculosis at the Executive Board of the World Health Organization
The Executive Board of the World Health Organization meet this week for the first of their bi-annual meetings, where members agree upon the agenda and the resolutions to be considered at the World Health Assembly. The Union successfully submitted the following intervention for two agenda items on ending tuberculosis. The intervention urges Member States to outline concrete steps towards achieving the End TB Strategy goals, such as fully funded national plans to incorporate the targets of the Political Declaration of the United Nations High Level Meeting on TB.
The two agenda items were EB146/10 ‘Draft global strategy for tuberculosis research and innovation and ending tuberculosis’ and EB146/11 ‘Progress in implementing the global strategy and targets for tuberculosis prevention, care and control after 2015 (the End TB Strategy)’.
146th Session of the WHO Executive Board: Intervention on ending tuberculosis.
The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung disease (The Union) is a global scientific organisation founded to advance solutions to the most pressing public health challenges affecting people living in poverty, including tuberculosis.
We welcome the WHO’s Global Research and Innovation Strategy’s focus on research that is needs-driven, evidence-based, affordable, and accessible, as well as the increased focus on involving TB-affected communities in every stage of research. The Strategy recognizes the role of incentives to stimulate innovation, and we ask member states to ensure these incentives include data and intellectual property sharing to encourage and support new collaborative models for research.
We welcome the Strategy’s reference to sharing of data arising from publicly funded research, with the ultimate goal of the public benefitting from public investments in science, and believe this should also extend to intellectual property arising from publicly funded research, for example through the Medicines Patent Pool.
To facilitate the closing of the funding gap, Member States should be transparent in the amount of funding they provide to TB R&D and look at collaborative mechanisms to coordinate TB R&D financing to ensure the timely development of and affordable access to vaccines, drugs and diagnostics to end TB.
With the resources required to end TB remaining well below what is required, The Union calls on all heads of state and governments to take note of progress toward achieving the END TB targets and urgently mobilize the resources needed to get on track to end TB. Member States should outline concrete steps they will take to accelerate progress towards achieving the End TB Strategy goals, for example, by incorporating the targets of the Political Declaration of the United Nations High Level Meeting on TB into national plans that are fully funded.
Watch footage from the 146th session of the Executive Board.