World TB Day 24 March : The Global Fight Against Tuberculosis is at Risk

BongJournal Newsroom : Tuberculosis persists to be a significant threat to human health around the globe, despite its preventive and curable nature. In 2023, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded an estimate of 10.8 million people having fallen ill with TB worldwide. Over 1 million people die from TB each year- making it the world’s top infectious killer along with HIV.

World Tuberculosis Day is marked on 24th March every year. With regards to it, WHO issued a news release on 20th March, 2025, calling for urgent action to address worldwide disruptions in tuberculosis services putting millions of lives at risk. It calls for urgent resources to protect and maintain TB care and support services for people in need across regions and countries. This release states that global efforts to combat TB have saved 79 million lives since 2000. However the drastic cuts in health funding that are occurring now pose a threat on this progress. Rising drug resistance in areas across Europe and contemporary conflicts in the Middle- East, Africa and Eastern Europe, are furthermore adding on to vulnerability of the situation.

Under this year’s theme: “YES! WE CAN END TB: COMMIT, INVEST, DELIVER”; World Tuberculosis Day campaign highlights a cry for urgency, accountability and hope. “The huge gains the world has made against TB over the past 20 years are now at risk as cuts to funding start to disrupt access to services for prevention, screening, and treatment for people with TB,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “But we cannot give up on the concrete commitments that world leaders made at the UN General Assembly just 18 months ago to accelerate work to end TB. WHO is committed to working with all donors, partners and affected countries to mitigate the impact of funding cuts and find innovative solutions.”

According to early reported by WHO, twenty seven countries are still facing crippling breakdowns in their TB response, with devastating and shattering consequences, like listed below:

• Human resource shortages hampering delivery of services.
• Diagnostic services severely disrupted .
• Delay in detection and treatment of tuberculosis .
• Data and surveillance systems collapsing, compromising disease tracking and management .

The fight against tuberculosis (TB) faces severe money problems:

• In 2023, only 26% of the needed $22 billion yearly funding was available
• TB research received just one-fifth of its $5 billion yearly target in 2022
• From 2019-2023, funding from countries dropped by $1.2 billion
• International funding increased slightly by only $0.1 billion

The WHO is trying to speed up TB vaccine development but needs more money urgently. For World TB Day, WHO asks everyone - people, communities, and governments - to help fight TB. Without working together, TB will continue to threaten millions of lives.