World leaders at the United Nations General Assembly agreed Wednesday to new targets to treat 40 million people with tuberculosis by the end of 2022.
The effort announced by the World Health Organization on Wednesday also would provide 30 million people with treatment to prevent tuberculosis. The U.N. held the first high-level meeting on tuberculosis as part of the assembly taking place in New York this week.
âToday is a landmark in the long war on TB,â said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, in a statement.
Government leaders agreed to provide $13 billion a year by 2022 to improve tuberculosis care and another $2 billion for research, WHO said. The organization did not elaborate how much each country would donate to the tuberculosis effort.
Research will also center on new drug-resistant variants of the disease.
Tuberculosis killed 1.6 million people in 2017 and sickened 10 million people, WHO added.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar attended the assembly on Tuesday. He discussed with South Africa Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi the importance of “intellectual property rights in fighting TB,” according to a readout from HHS.
