TB and international goals
- Targets for global TB control have been set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the international goals that United Nations member states and the world’s leading development institutions have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. MDG 6 Target 6C is to halt and reverse incidence of TB by 2015.
- The Stop TB Partnership has translated the MDG 6C into two specific goals: to halve TB prevalence and to halve TB mortality by 2015 compared with their levels in 1990.
- As a longer term goal, Stop TB targets to eliminate TB as a global public health problem by 2050 (a global incidence of less than 1 per million population). The Stop TB Partnership is a global network of international organizations, countries, donors from the public and private sectors, governmental and nongovernmental organizations and individuals.
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Picture by Jan van den Hombergh |
- Meeting these targets of 50% reduction in prevalence and mortality by 2015 is a challenge to the world. Projections indicate that these goals will certainly not be met in Africa or European regions. These regions are especially challenged by the global difficulties in case detection, increased incidence of TB in association with HIV co-infection and the spread of multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant TB strains.
- Even if the 2015 goals of halving prevalence and mortality would be achieved, then still about one million people a year would die of TB. The more ambitious goal of eliminating TB as a global public health problem by 2050 can only be achieved with the development of new and more effective drugs, diagnostics and vaccines.