• 
• 
• 

  Unitaid is hosted by the World Health Organization.

World TB Day

World TB Day

Wednesday March 24th was World Tuberculosis (TB) day, an event dedicated to the fight against this airborne disease that still kills almost 2 million people a year despite the existence of affordable treatments.

Around 200 million people become sick with TB in their lifetime and 1.8 million people died in 2008, in what constitutes a global public health emergency. The pandemic is the most virulent in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and is a major killer of HIV-positive people.Yet many are still unaware of the realities of this disease and World TB Day helps draw the public’s attention by highlighting both the challenges and the successes in the fight against TB.

It is also a chance for prominent ambassadors to lend a hand. This year, Nobel Peace prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s call for action was a brilliant testimony from both a patient and a campaigner. Jorge Sampaio, former Portuguese President and current UN Special Envoy to Stop Tuberculosis, issued a wake-up call for governments to acknowledge the critical importance of addressing tuberculosis as part of development and poverty-reduction strategies. New forces also joined the fight on World TB Day - British R&B singer and songwriter Craig David was named as a STOP TB Partnership Goodwill Ambassador..

How can MASSIVEGOOD help?

Your micro-contributions through MASSIVEGOOD go to UNITAID, which in addition to its extensive work fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria, is one of the world’s largest suppliers of TB medicines. Providing a steady supply of treatments is a key element of the strategy to eliminate TB. After all, TB is a curable disease. Over the years, global health organizations have created a highly effective program – called DOTS – that involves a regime of several drugs under heavy supervision. Around 36 million people have been cured thanks to 15 years of DOTS, according to the World Health Organization.

Curing TB using this strategy takes about six months and costs around $20 – or 10 clicks on MASSIVEGOOD. Unfortunately, virulent new strains of “drug resistant” TB are evolving and these cases can cost as much as $5,000 to treat, taking as long as two years.

Drug resistance occurs when patients don’t adhere to their treatment. When this happens, the TB baccilli will often mutate into a new form of the disease that is immune to standard drugs – hence the need for stronger and ultimately more expensive drugs. Drug resistance is a worldwide problem, with the former Soviet Union a current hotspot. In some parts of Russia, nearly 1 out of 4 cases are drug resistant – and this strain is spreading.

To respond to challenges such as drug resistance, UNITAID has a set of innovative programs that ensure a steady supply of treatments and badly-needed diagnostics to practically every corner of the globe where TB is rampant:

1. UNITAID is at the forefront of battling drug resistance. The best line of defense against drug resistance is ensuring a constant supply of drugs, so patients can continue their treatment to the very end. UNITAID, with its partner the Global Drug Facility (GDF) of the Stop TB Partnership, is reducing the cost and increasing the availability of TB drugs through its First-Line Project.

2. For patients already infected with drug resistant TB, UNITAID, together with its partners, is using the Scale-Up Program to increase access to the special treatment needed. Through this project, it is working to reduce drug delivery times from three to six months down to three weeks. UNITAID is also encouraging more producers to enter the market, helping improve quality and reduce prices by up to 25% by 2011.

3. In order to correctly diagnose drug-resistant TB, UNITAID is working with the Stop TB Partnership, the World Health Organization and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics to increase access to a new tool that can increase diagnostic time from three months to two days. This program can triple the amount of drug-resistant cases that are diagnosed, allowing specialists to save more lives by using the correct treatments.

4. With its Support for Pediatric Tuberculosis Project, UNITAID, through its partners, aims to provide more than 750,000 TB treatments to children under the age of 15 by 2011. In partnership with the Stop TB Partnership’s Global Drug Facility, UNITAID has achieved significant price reductions for child-specific TB drugs. These drugs combine several pills in one, and are easier for child to take.

With billions of airline tickets sold every year, MASSIVEGOOD can provide a steady stream of funding to UNITAID, to make sure that its TB programs have the appropriate resources to continue saving lives!